Web-Based Seamless Discharge Fact Sheet
What is Web-Based Seamless Discharge?
Working in partnership with a Calgary-based communications company (Clarity Inc.) and also Alberta Health Services, the W21C team has co-developed a web-based software tool that will interface with Alberta’s cutting-edge NetCare initiative to enhance communication between the acute-care and community care sectors. A key goal of this project is to facilitate safer transition of care.
Research Background
This project brings together several partners in the multidisciplinary W21C Initiative to target the recognized problem of suboptimal communication (among care providers, and between patients and care providers) when patients are discharged from the hospital care setting back to the care of their primary care physicians (+/- home care and other support services).
Working in partnership with a local web-based communications technology company (Clarity Inc.) who will provide in-kind and material support to technology development, our multidisciplinary research team involving medical specialists (Ghali, Gilmour, Bates), a family physician (Norton), nurses (White, King), and an AHS pharmacist (Duane Bates) will engage in an initial process of stakeholder focus groups to define areas where communication breakdowns occur, and recommend potential solutions to those breakdowns. This will then be followed by an iterative process of communication tool development and subsequent pilot testing to evaluate its effect on proximal indicators of safety and quality of care – i.e. patient and care provider satisfaction, patient and care provider knowledge of prescribed medications, and crude measures of medication administration errors. The preliminary work in web tool development and pilot testing will then form the basis for a subsequent clinical trial assessing the tool in a broader and larger pool of patients, and assessing a larger set of safety-related outcome measures. The objective is that data input can begin the day of admission and will be compiled throughout the patient's stay. Upon discharge, the primary physician will receive email/fax notification that his/her patient has been discharged and a secure Internet link will allow providers to access the information immediately.
Questions?
For more information about Seamless Discharge, please contact Shandra Kimpton.