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Smart technology is showing up everywhere.

• In our living rooms, where we can adjust lighting or play music automatically and remotely.
• In our travels, where apps and personal assistants guide our routes and warn us of traffic delays.
• In our daily schedules, where predictive analytics smartly remind us of recurring appointments.
• And in the highest performing hospitals, where smart technology is changing the hospital experience for the better – for both patients, and staff.

Discharge planning – or more precisely, the lack of it – was a predominant conversation at the Chief Nursing Officer Summit we attended last month in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Walk into any major retailer or entertainment venue, and it’s a good bet that digital signage will grab your attention in some way. Maybe you want to find the nearest concession stand or catch video snippets of the game action at a sports arena. At the grocery store, perhaps you want to peruse the specials of the day or watch a cooking demonstration.

It wasn’t that long ago that teachers spent hours delivering lesson plans using what, then, was a creative new tool - the overhead projector.  However, what seemed like a good idea at the time has since fallen out of favor for a lot of reasons.

It’s been 12 years since the first chief patient experience officer (CXO) was hired. That was 2007 when Cleveland Clinic took the bold step to create the new position on the hospital’s executive team, along with forming a new department – the Office of Patient Experience.

Every hospital aspires to provide a safe environment for patients and employees. And most do, according to Leapfrog’s most recent survey. Nearly three-fourths of the 2,000-plus hospitals in the 2018 Leapfrog Hospital Survey met all nine components of Leapfrog’s never-event policy.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services put hospitals on notice back in 2012 that excessive patient readmissions would not be acceptable – and in fact, could be costly to the hospital. For this reason, the Department of Health and Human Services established the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP). The HRRP served as part of the Affordable Care Act’s goal to improve healthcare by financially rewarding quality care.

To say that technology has changed – is changing – how healthcare is delivered is an understatement. The Gartner Group estimates that worldwide, hospital IT spending will grow by 2.8 percent this year from its $3.7 trillion 2018 level.

Adequately preparing a hospital patient to transition to care at home is one of the most important deterrents to hospital readmissions. Alarmingly, HCAHPS scores for care transition and discharge planning often fall among the lowest of all HCAHPS ratings.

A Beryl Institute study of 2,000 consumers uncovered some insight into the importance patients put on their patient care experience. A staggering nine out of ten respondents said their patient experience is somewhat or very important to them, but why? They believe that a good experience contributes to their healing and health outcomes.