A trip to the hospital can be a stressful and overwhelming experience. While the patient is already unwell and concerned, they are also receiving information and guidance about their current and future care from physicians and therapists. Upon discharge, the patient or caretakers must take this information and continue self-treatment at home. But how is the patient to keep track and apply all of the advice and instructions - some spoken, some printed?

Patient portals may contain notes about the visit, but often don’t have detailed information that a patient was given in person. Many patients lose printed discharge information and reasonably resort to looking for the information online. However, this is lacking the specific input from the various specialists and therapists that all provided direction.

An ideal solution would be an after-visit summary that consolidates information from all points of care and a patient could access at any time in their portal. Of course, producing these notes for every patient in language that they could understand would be extremely time-consuming for a physician. This is another area that could be helped by dictation systems. Capturing the instructions as each care provider speaks them to the patient and providing both the audio and transcribed text would help a patient remember what was conveyed.

Additional information could be automatically supplied with libraries of information tied to medical coding. Instead of asking patients to remember to ask for key information and keep track of the answers, these formats could become electronic templates and filled with specific details. This could be further enhanced with the ability for physicians to include additional instructions as needed. The information library could be made take into account the specifics of a patient such as prescription information, health numbers to monitor and aim for, and dietary instructions/goals.

Outcomes can be improved with better patient discharge information. Providing the information in an understandable and accessible way can benefit communication and help a patient take an active role in their recovery.