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Ways To Do Patient Monitoring and Engagement After Discharge

by Saurabh Chhabra
Patient Engagement

Patient Engagement: When a patient is getting treated in the hospital, the doctors carry hundreds of things to ensure the betterment of their health by improving quality care. Moreover, in the treatment, diagnosis, and discharge process, the patient comes in interaction with various medical staff, practitioners, and other members outside the room, ensuring that the patient recovers soon. 

However, after discharge also the hospital’s work is not over. If they do not have a post-discharge patient engagement plan, then it will be no longer that the patient will appear for follow-up treatment. The importance of follow-up and the perfect strategy for it is explained below; continue to know more. 

Why is Patient Management Important After Discharge? 

Patient engagement is important in many ways; if the professionals follow up with the patients after their discharge, it is possible to identify patients who risk developing an adverse condition later. As a result, it increases the patient’s condition and eliminates the chances of the patient getting readmitted. 

However, if the hospital is not prepared from before, they might seem overwhelmed and have no time for proper patient follow-up when they get readmitted. Also, any follow-up that is not planned is always time consuming, work for a fewer patient, and lacks data collection. 

So, in short, when it comes to post-discharge, having a strategy is important. For that, the key elements providers must focus on includes:

  • Where will the patient go after discharge? The providers need to take into account when the patient is sent back to his home. Do they have someone to take care of them because it is not the same to send an older patient home with no one to take care of than who has? Also, if their homes have suitable surroundings.
  • Will it be challenging to get medications and other follow-up services post-discharge?
  • How much work patients can perform, like will they be able to take care of themselves or will they need support for carrying toileting, feeding, and other daily activities. 
  • Does the patient have experienced readmission before? If this is the case, the providers must consider extending their stay at the hospital. 

Strategies to follow for better patient management after discharge

As we know, follow-up is very important first to keep the patient healthier and have positive outcomes. Secondly, it reduces the chances of hospital readmission. Some of the efficient strategies providers can implement to increase patient engagement are:

Using mHealth for communication with the patient

The hospital can use the telehealth system to increase convenient access to the healthcare system and follow-up appointments. As a result, it reduces the cost, and other short comes of transportation for effective care. Also, the patients do not have to leave their work to attend the follow-up care. 

As a result, it has been seen that the patient is recovering more as they need fewer in-person engagements. Another thing to keep in mind that mobile healthcare follow-up session neither complicates the situation nor reduces patient’s satisfaction rather it improves the convenience rate. 

Facilitating transportation for patients

There are times when patients feel difficult to travel to the hospital at every small interval to access in-person care. However, when the hospital provides ridesharing opportunities, it improves patient engagement in healthcare by making transportation inexpensive to them. 

Many healthcare organizations are following this ridesharing strategy to become consumer-centric. Thus, evolving as a premier organization. 

Imparting knowledge about follow-up care

Due to negligence, there are many patients who don’t attend follow-up care appointments and score poorly on their chronic disease questionnaires. In fact, in a study, the patients answered less than half of the questions about their condition correctly in the follow-up questions. 

Such data show the need to be aware of patients’ health, treatment, choices and other factors. Thus, providers should conduct a thorough education session for patients and their families for better healthcare attendance.   

EHR for healthcare

EHR enables the patients to enjoy portal service, help them access medical websites and give them mobile health app facilities. In other words, EHR provides the patient with access to important healthcare needs like patient feedback form hospital, vaccination history, test results, medication information and more. Also, instead of appearing in the hospital for printed versions, the patients can simply log in to their portal from anywhere to access the information they need. 

Other benefits of EHR adds to improve patient care

Electronic health records improve almost every aspect of healthcare, making it simpler to carry patient engagement and maintain safety. In addition, it makes the information available at the fingertips and streamlines the processes. The other benefits of using EHR system in hospitals are:

Facilitates portability

EHR enables the patients to share their information with every doctor they deal with and ensure they are up-to-date about their health history. In other words, EHR allows the provider to know the patient’s care chain, like what medications they are taking, the treatment plan they are choosing and others. This way, overlaps inpatient care can be avoided as the provider has a view of the diagnoses, treatment and other details. 

Patients having accessibility

All patients have access to their mail, so sharing information through these mediums helps them remain up-to-date. They give them access to current medical records and allow them to review their notes and treatment results on a real-time basis. It may also help the patient to make a clearer decision. 

Reduce the workload of the hospital

When professionals get proper training in using EHR for their benefit, it increases their current workflow and improves patient engagement. This is because the providers have to dedicate less time in maintaining documents and because there is a fewer mistake it enhances productivity. In fact, many EHR platforms also help streamline processes like sending patients reminders, facilitating patient refill and booking follow-up appointments. 

Conclusion

Hospital care providers must do everything possible to improve their follow-up system to reduce the risk of relapse. Some of the simple ways to do that is mentioned below. In addition, EHR is helping medical professionals in many ways and making it effortless for them to carry work that was once tedious to maintain. 

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