Transitioning hospitalized patients back into the community health setting is important for hospitalists and office-based primary care clinicians. This is especially true in an era when hospital readmission rates are being scrutinized by payers, hospitals, and health systems. Listen in as two experts, including the chief quality officer at a major hospital, address the challenge of effective transitions from the hospital to the community, and discuss best practices and strategies.

They present a discharge planning checklist, as well as a discharge patient education tool. The latter is a crucial element designed to make it easier for patients to understand why they may need to stay in the hospital. The best patient education tools are presented in "living room language" that the patient and family members can understand. They are educational, engender trust, and are a critical tool in an age of shared decision-making.

This segment is a part of a two-part series on transitions of care that appears in CMEinfo Insider.

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