Video Assisted Transitions of Care: The Power of Video for Hospital Discharge Process

Hospital discharge is an essential transition of a patient's care from the inpatient health care team to the patient and caregiver. While a variety of factors may contribute to the effective discharge process, adequate communication between all parties significantly contributes to better outcomes. However, studies indicate that nearly one in five Medicare patients are re-hospitalized within one month of discharge due to lack of patient understanding and compliance to the post-hospital plan of care.

The standard discharge process, which is similar across all disease etiologies, has not changed significantly in many years and lags behind today's technological advances. Currently, the standard discharge process most commonly is delivered as a written document. This document summarizes the patient's hospitalization and discharge instructions in a plain text format, not significantly personalized, and is reviewed with the patient and caregivers usually at time of the discharge. Patients may not pay attention or understand the clinical information communicated to them and may not remember the dialogues during the discharge. In addition, patients often misplace their discharge papers and will not follow the post discharge instructions.

In early 2009, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act was adopted to promote the meaningful use of health information technology. Stage 1 of HITECH centered on 5 underlying health outcomes of meaningful use: (1) improve quality, safety, efficiency, and reduce health disparities; (2) engage patients and families in their healthcare; (3) improve care coordination; (4) improve population and public health; and (5) ensure adequate privacy and security protections for personal health information. While the passage of HITECH and application of new database technologies has prompted an increase in the use of electronic health records (EHR), the incentives of meaningful use has not been widely applied (Hsiao and Hing)3.

The current "Age of the Internet" and its ability to deliver data to almost any physical locale instantaneously, including high resolution audio and video, has fostered new ways to create, view and share information - including, potentially, medical records. eDischarge is a new multimedia technology designed to supplement the discharge process and enhance provider-patient communication by facilitating the delivery of discharge and follow-up information to patients. Designed as a secure, HIPPA-compliant, cloud-based software platform, participants are able to access the eDischarge system using a personal computer or a mobile device, which can enhance access to health information for the patient. Through eDischarge, participants are given personalized videos, documents, and images tailored specifically to their particular medical care. eDischarge permits inclusion of both structured health information exchange data as well as medical data to be added to discharge. Providers are able to asynchronously create content throughout a participant's hospital stay, which the participant will be able to access post discharge. The investigators believe that this technology has the potential to improve patient engagement and experience as well as enhance a patient's understanding of his disease process and treatment.