Leadership Insights: Care Transitions and Readmissions

This New Year will bring opportunities to ensure solid systems are in place for successful care transitions in order to prevent unnecessary hospital readmissions. In striving for quality care and positive outcomes as well as to move toward positive future viability in the marketplace, here are some key strategies to work in the direction of a successful process:

1. Policies and Procedures: Ensure development, communication and implementation of organizational policies and procedures for pre-admission process, communication across continuums of care, organizational evidence based systems to reduce transfers to the hospital, such as theINTERACT™ 4.0 Quality Improvement Program, advance care planning and successful discharge care planning.

2. Clinical Systems Optimization: This is a great time for leaders to evaluate the clinical competencies of facility licensed professionals in order to determine relevant training and resources and follow up to determine successful training outcomes.

3. Industry Updates: Ensure that team members have the latest updates and developments. This strategy would be to provide resources and training to organizational leadership in order to have a solid understanding of the following:

• Value Based Purchasing
• Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation (IMPACT) Act of 2014
• The National Quality Strategy Priorities and Long-Term Goals
• Five-Star Ratings and Quality Measures