Evaluation of Patients’ Discharge Time on a Ward: Preliminary Findings

Public healthcare serves people. It is important to understand how effective these services are. This study aims to provide a methodology on how to evaluate the hospital’s effectiveness of a specific service. The studied service is patient discharge from a hospital ward. More specifically, we have focused on patient discharge time. We calculated patient discharge time as a difference in time between two observed timestamps: firstly, the time when the patient was told to go home, and secondly, the time when the patient had discharge documentation and medication handed in his/her possession. We collected data from direct observations about patient discharge at ward and also from the hospital information system. Findings of our preliminary analyses show that patient discharge time can be improved by organizational change and new electronic prescribing system.