Patient ER visits and readmissions after discharge incur many costs, both to the patients and their families and to the hospital, which can often be quite substantial. Often, these readmissions occur because after a patient is discharged home, they are unsure of what to do about symptoms they experience and rather than talking with their providers, they wait too long to seek help so that problems that could have been handled with a visit to an outpatient provider or a phone call must then be dealt with in the emergency room or a hospital admission. Anything we can do to reduce patient readmission after discharge or hospital-based procedures would help our patients avoid further visits to the hospital, would reduce our hospital costs, and would likely improve patient satisfaction.

Some departments make routine phone calls to patients the day after discharge in order to address these issues and solve problems before they become a reason for a visit to the hospital. Often these phone calls also help to ensure that patients know the best way to contact providers if they do have questions or problems in the future, so that patients call and talk with a provider rather than showing up to the emergency room.

I propose that the medical center designates adequately-trained individuals to call every patient within 24 hours after discharge from the hospital or after a hospital-based procedure at the UCSF Health System. To evaluate the efficacy of the program, we can track readmission/ER visit rates to determine if rates of readmission or ER visits decrease after instituting the routine phone calls. In each phone call, any problems/difficulties that the patient was experienced would be addressed and would be passed on to someone qualified to address them, and the patients would also be asked if they knew the appropriate way to contact their provider and would be given this contact information again if needed. This would not only work to save costs by avoiding readmisisons, but would also likely result in improved patient satisfaction and patient experience with our health system as well.