Health Care Policy and Procedure Memo

This memo addresses the challenges faced by the healthcare system in the United States during transitional care, particularly medication errors. It proposes policies to address these challenges and improve the continuity of treatment procedures.

Running head: HEALTH CARE POLICY AND PROCEDURE MEMO
Health care policy and procedure memo
Name of the student:
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2HEALTH CARE POLICY AND PROCEDURE MEMO
In United States, patients belonging to different age groups experience transitions in
healthcare system. Transitional care refers to the transfer of patients from a particular setup to
another setting either within or outside of the same location where he was primarily in. This
system faces many challenges such as poor communication between the healthcare providers
and the family members of the patient, medication error after the transfer, potentially high
rate of re-admission after discharge from the hospital and others. The memo addresses the
medication error in particular. The effect of such challenges leave an impact on the allied
health communities such as nurses, personal care-providers of the patient after discharge,
physiotherapists. Whenever the patients complaint about poor transitional service and opt for
other hospitals, the superior authorities ask the allied healthcare professionals to resign. This
results in employee attrition in healthcare industries. Considering these issues policies have
been structured in this memo that can hopefully address all the challenges effectively in this
context.
Transitional care can be defined as the set of actions required to provide support to the
patients suffering from a chronic illness and being transferred from one healthcare level to the
other. It can be from a normal ward to the intensive care unit, it can be post discharge
condition where the patient is shifted to his residence but still requires medical attention to be
continued. Among many challenges in maintaining a continuation of treatment procedures,
erroneous medication is one of the major concern. This is a result of poor communication
between healthcare providers and family members of the patient and sometimes the lack of
attention provided by the carers at home. This leads to increased rate of readmission which is
more than 25% in US (Rochester‐Eyeguokan et al., 2016). Such incidents substantiate the
need of a structured policy to be implemented. Erroneous medication followed by increase in
patient mortality rate and negative effect on allied health employees can be addressed by
incorporating following policies into practice:

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 Usage of a medication guidelines in form a report for each patient should be prepared
and all the names of the medicines and their substitutes should be mentioned with
proper explanation regarding time of administration, frequency.
 Telehealth facility is gaining appreciation among patients. In this alternative the
patient should be provided with an electronic device through which the patient can
communicate with the physician and seek for immediate support through videography
or telecommunication.
 Comprehensive discharge planning can be a complete solution to the issue in
question. In this method, the patient is asked to maintain a follow-up schedule. A
skilled staff should be sent with the patient with an electronic recorder to monitor the
health conditions and report to the hospital. Such workers should be given incentives
upon successful completion of the monitoring.
Among the three, telehealth support system meets all the criteria of cost effectiveness,
efficiency and it can reduce the readmission and mortality rate due to poor transitional care
(Albert et al., 2015). The employees such as nurses, pharmacists, physiotherapists will be
informed prior so that they can correctly perform their duties without the fear of termination.

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Reference:
Albert, N. M., Barnason, S., Deswal, A., Hernandez, A., Kociol, R., Lee, E., ... & White-
Williams, C. (2015). Transitions of care in heart failure: a scientific statement from
the American Heart Association. Circulation: Heart Failure, HHF-
0000000000000006
Rochester‐Eyeguokan, C. D., Pincus, K. J., Patel, R. S., & Reitz, S. J. (2016). The current
landscape of transitions of care practice models: a scoping review. Pharmacotherapy:
The Journal of Human Pharmacology and Drug Therapy, 36(1), 117-133.