Hospital Discharge Patient Experience phase 2

This is a report by Healthwatch Wakefield. The project looked at experiences of hospital discharge.

The overall aim of the work carried out by Healthwatch Wakefield was to gather views and experiences of adults, and their families, who have recently been discharged from Pinderfields, Pontefract, or Dewsbury hospitals. This was to ensure that the patient voice is heard and to enable appropriate changes to be made to improve the patient experience of hospital discharge.

The public engagement for this project was carried out in two phases, this was to compare findings and see if there had been any changes over time. In both Phase 1 and Phase 2, weekly, semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted with 

people who had recently been discharged from hospital. The contacts were provided by the Integrated Transfer of Care Hub, also known as IToCH. IToCH focus on people who need further support from health or social care in order to be discharged from hospital.

A total of 56 telephone interviews were completed for this phase. In phase 1, 111 telephone interviews were conducted.

There are recommendations in this report.

• Continue with the focus and integrated ways of working in order to further improve the patient experience of hospital discharge.
• There is still a need to further consider what is in place to keep family members up to date where patients are unable to keep in touch themselves.
• Continue to work on improving the patient discharge leaflet. In Phase 2, slightly less people said that they had been given a discharge leaflet compared with Phase 1. Consider when, and how, the leaflet is given to the patient and the format of the leaflet.
• Consider implementing a number of ‘check in calls’ with people who have recently been discharged from hospital in order to keep informed of any issues and further improvements.

There are no follow up actions in this report. However the commissioner of the service has responded to say they take note of the findings.