With regards to transitional care or transitional medicine, this is in reference to the coordination and the continuity of health care throughout movement from a particular healthcare setting to a new facility or it could also be that they are moving the patient back to their 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.
Seniors who are suffering from wide varieties of health conditions are typically in need of health care services in various settings in order to meet their specific and varying needs. For younger folks on the other hand, the focus is more on successful moving from adult to child health services.
If we will base transition medicine as per the American Geriatrics Society or AGS, they discuss such as being the set of actions that are created to secure the coordination as well as continuity of health care while patients are transferred between locations or on different levels of care in the same facility or location. And in relation to the representatives involved in the process, they are varying as well from sub-acute as well as post-acute nursing homes, hospitals, primary and specialty care offices, patient’s home and even long term care facilities.
And for transitional care, this is mostly about comprehensive plan of care and also, the health care practitioner’s availability and if they’re trained in relation to handling chronic care. Not only that, practitioners must be able to have current information about the preferences, clinical status and goals of the patient. This additionally includes the education of family and the patient, logistical arrangements and coordination among healthcare professionals involved during the transition.
While on the transition, patients who are receiving complex medical needs (mostly older patients) are at higher risks of poorer outcomes as a result of communication errors and/or medication errors among the providers and between patients/family caregivers and providers involved. There have been numerous studies that were performed in the subject of transitional care and look further into transition from hospitalization to the next provider setting which is oftentimes a rehab center, sub-acute nursing facility or home either with a professional homecare service or none. And in relation to the poor outcome of the transition, this mostly includes 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. With the unexpected and constant rise in healthcare expenditure, it resulted to more attention on providers, policymakers and patients on restraining unnecessary use of resources.