Kane summarizes the options patients and families have when they are discharged from the hospital to another health care venue.
a key concern … “Often social workers are really concerned with the immediate discharge plan … from their facility’s perspective; they’re not always as in tune with the future placement options for that [patient].”
Mor and Besdine’s accompanying editorial … “The biggest challenge patients and families face as they decide their discharge destination is to establish realistic goals of care in the absence of coherent information about their prognosis and options.”
DRG’s have served to force patients and families to make these decisions with even less ‘coherent information’.