The Path To Finding Better Support
Transitional care or transitional medicine actually refers to continuity and coordination of health care throughout a movement from a particular healthcare setting to a new one or perhaps, to the patient’s home. This is otherwise called as transition between health care practitioners and establishments as both of their care and condition changes during the course of acute or chronic illness.
And in relation to seniors, particularly the ones who have several health conditions, they are mostly in need of health care services that have to be done in different settings in an effort to ensure that their varying needs are satisfied. For younger folks on the other hand, the focus is more on successful moving from adult to child health services.
As per the American Geriatrics Society or AGS, they define transitional medicine as a series of actions meant to guarantee the coordination and the continuity of health care as patients are being transferred between locations or on different levels of care in the same facility or location. The representatives however include but not limited to sub-acute as well as post-acute nursing homes, hospitals, primary and specialty care offices, patient’s home and even long term care facilities.
Transitional care is focused on comprehensive plan of care and at the same time, the availability of health care practitioners who are well trained when it comes to chronic care. It is not the only thing that should be met because for the practitioners, they need to have updated information about the patient’s preferences, goals and their clinical status too. Furthermore, this will compose of educating the patient themselves and their family, the arranging the logistics and proper coordination among healthcare experts who are involved in the transition.
While moving on transition stage, the patients who do receive complex medical needs, normally older patients are actually at greater risks of facing poorer outcomes because of communication errors and/or medication errors among different providers and patients/family caregivers and providers involved. Most of the studies performed in area of transitional care looked further into transition from hospitalization to next provider setting which is typically a rehab center, sub-acute nursing facility or home either with a professional homecare service or none. As a matter of fact, the adverse outcome of patient does include temporary or even permanent disability, recurrence or continuation of symptoms and worse, death.
The healthcare utilization outcomes for these patients who experience poor transitional medicine include returning to emergency room or perhaps, readmission to the hospital. Due to the reason that there’s a constant rise in healthcare expenditure at unpredictable rate, there’s increased focused on providers, policymakers and patients on restraining unnecessary use of resources.