Care Transition Patient Experience Study With Electronic Tool

Patients being admitted to hospital are becoming more complex and they often require a team of health professionals (doctors from different disciplines, nurses, and allied health professionals) working together to meet their needs. Effective communication among this team and with patients is essential to providing high quality patient-centered care. Care Connector is an electronic tool that was developed to help health professionals communicate about patient care with each other. It also incorporates best practice whenever possible (such as the used of Patient Oriented Discharge Summary \[PODS\] developed at University Health Network) during care transitions. We want to understand whether using electronic tools can address the communication issues faced by patients/families, and whether they impact on repeat visits to the Emergency Department or the hospital after discharge. In this study, we will be asking patients and families who have recently been discharged from hospital to describe their experience with communication and care transitions through a brief telephone survey. All of them will be discharged from units where Care Connector was used. However, some of the units would have used the PODS feature while others will not. A small group will also be invited to participate in an in-depth telephone interview. The results of this study will be used to improve Care Connector and to enhance communication and patient experience in general.