A team of researchers led by Principal Investigator Dr. Marianne Weiss, RN, professor of nursing at Marquette University, recently conducted a randomized clinical trial (the READI study – Readiness Evaluation and Discharge Interventions) to test whether nurses can reduce patient readmissions and emergency departments visits after discharge by adding a structured assessment of patient discharge readiness prior to discharge. The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Network Open on Jan. 25, 2019.
“Reducing readmissions and emergency department visits is a national priority that has led to numerous initiatives to improve the health care experience, patient outcomes and cost of health services. Despite these efforts, readmission rates remain high in some hospitals,” said Dr. Weiss. “In high readmission settings, we found that adding tools for nurses to evaluate patient readiness for discharge helped to reduce readmissions in the first 30 days after hospital discharge.”
The research team included nurse and economist researchers from the University of Michigan; Loyola University Chicago; University of Maryland, Baltimore; University of South Carolina; Abt Associates and St. Ambrose University. The study was conducted from 2014 to 2017 and included more than 144,000 adult patients from 66 patient care units in 33 Magnet-designated hospitals. Read the full story here.
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