Assessing the impact of a quality improvement program on the quality and timeliness of discharge documents: A before and after study

Abstract

Whereas handover of pertinent information between hospital and primary care is necessary to ensure continuity of care and patient safety, both quality of content and timeliness of discharge summary need to be improved. This study aims to assess the impact of a quality improvement program on the quality and timeliness of the discharge summary/letter (DS/DL) in a University hospital with approximatively 40 clinical units using an Electronic medical record (EMR).A discharge documents (DD) quality improvement program including revision of the EMR, educational program, audit (using scoring of DD) and feedback with a ranking of clinical units, was conducted in our hospital between October 2016 and November 2018. Main outcome measures were the proportion of the DD given to the patient at discharge and the mean of the national score assessing the quality of the discharge documents (QDD score) with 95% confidence interval.Intermediate evaluation (2017) showed a significant improvement as the proportion of DD given to patients increased from 63% to 85% (P