A one-page discharge checklist is cutting hospital readmissions

The checklist fits on one side of a sheet of paper. Most of it formalises what nursing staff were already doing.

The two questions that mattered

Item seven asks who will be at home when the patient arrives. Item nine asks who is collecting the medication. Neither had been recorded routinely before.

Across four hospitals over eight months, thirty-day readmissions fell by close to a fifth, with the largest improvement among patients who live alone.

Spreading it

Three more hospital groups have adopted the sheet. The authors have made it freely available rather than licensing it.