Patient Discharges

[MsSocalRN]

How long does it take for you to discharge a patient? And what does your facility require you to put in your discharge? It literally takes hours where I work. I am just trying to research why it takes that long. Thank you in advance for any responses.

[chrisrn24]

I work LTC but when my sister was in the hospital we got a med list, educated for roughly ten minutes and then transferred to a chair and was wheeled down to the parking lot. Maybe took twenty minutes at the most.

[KelRN215, BSN, RN]

It depends on the discharge. It takes longer if you're transferring someone to rehab or sending them home with services. When I worked in the hospital a simple discharge could take 5-10 minutes while the more involved ones would take much longer. Sometimes you got the patient out the door but then still had a ton of paperwork/phone calls to make to arrange their services.

[Coriander, BSN, RN]

It depends on if it's a simple home discharge or if case management/SNF are involved.

Home discharges normally take us 15 minutes to an hour, depending on if the MD has placed correct orders and has done med reconciliation. If we need consultations, it may take a bit longer.

Transfers to facilities are another matter. They can take a few hours, especially if an ambulance is needed for transport. The paperwork and report-calling also take a lot of time. We're trying a number of things to expedite the process.

[silverbells_star]

I can have you out in the amount of time it takes me to print your paperwork, however to the pt it feels like it took hours, because the darn residents tell the pts on their 0600 rounds they are being discharged but forget to mention that the attending and all the consults have to approve first. So frustrating.

[Nurse SMS, MSN, RN]

I only count the part of the discharge that I have control over. Therefore, by the time I have the med rec from the doc, the discharge orders, the rehab/SNF/home health assignments from social work with the number to call report as well as the time transport is coming, I need only 20-30 minutes to reconcile the med rec, remove tele and IVs, do patient/family education, get signatures and check on core measures and immunizations and document all the above. The rest of all the stuff mentioned prior to this though can make the process take hours. Those parts, however, I can do nothing about other than wait. I don't inform my charge nurse that a patient is discharging until I have everything I need from the docs and social workers/case managers, because truthfully, without those things they aren't discharging.

[RNperdiem, RN]

From the family's point of view, the doctor said they could go home. The patient was told this on morning rounds. The docs need to finish rounding on all the patients, then tasks/orders that are urgent come next. Eventually the discharge orders and summary get written. The secretary schedules follow up clinic appointments. The nurse does discharge teaching and gives printouts of all meds, then transportation gets called and there is another wait for someone with a wheelchair to pick up the patient and get them moved out. By then, hours have gone by.

One of the reasons this takes hours is that it is not just nursing involved. The doctors, the social workers, transport, scheduling of followups, calling report to another facility all require time. Nursing is usually the quickest. The biggest wait, I found, is waiting for the actual discharge orders.