Is a Post-Discharge Clinic in Your Hospital's Future?
“This model works well with our patient population. We actually try to do primary care on the inpatient side as well. Our hospitalists are specialized in that approach, given our patient population. We see a lot of immigrants, non-English speakers, people with low health literacy, and the homeless, many of whom lack primary care,” Dr. Martinez says. “We do medication reconciliation, reassessments, and follow-ups with lab tests. We also try to assess who is more likely to be a no-show, and who needs more help with scheduling follow-up appointments.”
Clinical coverage of post-discharge clinics varies by setting, staffing, and scope. If demand is low, hospitalists or ED physicians can be called off the floor to see patients who return to the clinic, or they could staff the clinic after their hospitalist shift ends. Post-discharge clinic staff whose schedules are light can flex into providing primary-care visits in the clinic. Post-discharge can also could be provided in conjunction with—or as an alternative to—physician house calls to patients’ homes. Some post-discharge clinics work with medical call centers or telephonic case managers; some even use telemedicine.
It also could be a growth opportunity for hospitalist practices. “It is an exciting potential role for hospitalists interested in doing a little outpatient care,” Dr. Martinez says. “This is also a good way to be a safety net for your safety-net hospital.”
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What Do PCPs Think? It May Be Harder than It Looks
Although some PCPs instinctively will be suspicious of a hospitalist-run post-discharge clinic, it should be possible to clearly limit the service to short-term, immediate-post-hospital encounters focused on issues related to patients unable to get timely access to primary care, according to Dr. Doctoroff.
“I think there is a diversity of opinion by PCPs,” she says. “Some doctors really believe that it interferes with the patient-doctor relationship. But after we’ve been here for a couple of years, we’ve built up credibility with many providers.”
Charles Cutler, MD, FACP, a general internist with a practice in Norristown, Pa., and a member of the ACP’s Board of Regents, says the post-discharge clinic is “a novel idea.”
“I’d be very curious to see if this really is a way to provide better and more cost-effective care,” adds Dr. Cutler, who normally retains management of his own patients when they are hospitalized but agrees that hospitals need to find a solution for lapses in care transitions.
Even so, he says, establishing an outpatient clinic presence may be more difficult than many hospitalists appreciate. “You can’t just put a doc in a room. That physician needs equipment, scheduling, and support staff,” he says. “In our small practice, we employ one person just to ensure that each patient chart is up to date. The overhead necessary to replicate a typical medical office, even one merely providing a transition of care, could be substantial.”
Dr. Cutler emphasizes such office-based challenges as billing, which is distinctly different from hospital billing, and credentialing by insurance companies.
“There are many aspects that have to be thought through. If you see the patient, you need to make yourself available for follow-up calls, because you’ve created a relationship,” he says. “I’m a believer that hospital medicine requires a degree of specialization. But so does an office practice.”
Dr. Cutler acknowledges that some PCPs will be resentful of post-discharge clinics. “But if you don’t like a hospitalist-run discharge clinic, then you have a responsibility to rearrange your schedule to accommodate patients after their hospital discharge,” he says.
Partner with Community
Tallahassee (Fla.) Memorial Hospital (TMH) in February launched a transitional-care clinic in collaboration with faculty from Florida State University, community-based health providers, and the local Capital Health Plan. Hospitalists don’t staff the clinic, but the HM group is its major source of referrals, says Dean Watson, MD, chief medical officer at TMH. Patients can be followed for up to eight weeks, during which time they get comprehensive assessments, medication review and optimization, and referral by the clinic social worker to a PCP and to available community services.
