Transition from hospital to nursing home: Discharge planners as a potential lever for quality improvements?

IntroductionPublishing provider quality information on medical comparison portals (MCP) can help consumers of long-term care services to compare between well and poorly performing nursing homes. The selection of goodover bad-performing providers can trigger quality improvements in the healthcare system [3]; however, older hospital patients and their relatives might have difficulties in dealing with quality data [14]. Discharge planners (DP) “may be in the best position to translate publicly available information about [nursing homes] quality to [patients] and their families” [2]. BackgroundQuality reportingThe M…