Nine Ways Hospitals Can Use Electronic Health Records to Reduce Readmissions

Nine recommendations for hospitals that are ready to use EHR technology to reduce readmissions

1. Use readmission risk assessment to apply resources to most appropriate patients;
2. Use electronic communication to increase reliability of communication with primary care physicians;
3. Use pharmacy resources to improve quality of medication reconciliation;
4. Use EHR resources to support BOOST rounds to improve collaboration;
5. Improve patient education by integrating with discharge workflows;
6. Use EHR workflows to support discharge coaches;
7. Support EHR build that creates patient-centric multidisciplinary discharge paperwork;
8. Support coordination of care with electronic means of scheduling post-discharge care prior to discharge; and
9. Reduce technical and financial barriers to communication of medication list and medication compliance at home.