Background: Early morning patient discharge from the hospital is increasingly being recognized as a key dimension of quality of care. At our institution, there is a significantly lower early discharge rate on the teaching hospitalist teams in comparison with the non-teaching teams.
Objective: To implement a resident-driven intervention in the teaching medical services to increase overall discharge order rate before 11 am (DOB-11) and assess the effect of this intervention on hospital length of stay (LOS), 30-day readmission rates (RR), and resident perception.
Design: Interrupted time series as well as controlled before-after designs.
Participants: All inpatients discharged from general medicine units.
Interventions: We implemented an educational didactic in conjunction with resident-attending daily walk rounds followed by resident-led multidisciplinary discharge huddles to identify next-day discharges.
Main measures: The primary outcome was DOB-11 rates 18 months pre- and 12 months post-intervention.
Secondary outcomes: LOS and RR. Additionally, we assessed residents' perception of the early discharge protocol.
Key results: The DOB-11 rate increased from 12 to 29% (p < 0.001), LOS increased by 1.47 days (P < 0.001), and RR increased by 0.32% (P = 0.84), respectively, on the teaching teams. Compared with the non-teaching (control) teams, the teaching teams registered a greater increase in DOB-11 rate (by 17%, p < 0.001; ratio of adjusted ORs 2.16; 95% CI, 1.65, 2.85; p value < 0.001), small increase in LOS (by 0.74 day, p = 0.39; ratio of adjusted post-/pre-intervention ratio [teaching] and post-/pre- intervention ratio [non-teaching] = 1.05, 95% CI, 0.97, 1.14, p = 0.23), and relative increase in RR (by 3.98%, p = 0.07, and ratio of ORs = 1.35, 95% CI, 1.03, 1.8), p = 0.03). Approximately 55% (16/29) of the residents agreed that the early discharge initiative helped in understanding the importance of prioritizing patients for early discharge. Additionally, 55% (20/36) of the residents "agreed" that the early discharge initiative compromised their learning during teaching rounds.
Conclusion: Our study demonstrates that DOB-11 is an achievable goal, not only for non-teaching teams but also for resident-run teaching teams.
Keywords: early hospital discharge; length of stay; readmission.