Discharge Management in Nursing

Abstract

Currently, 1.68 million people in need of care are cared for at home, 616,000 of them by outpatient care services. This care includes basic and treatment care, which is increasingly being supplemented by home nursing care. The entitlement to home nursing care is basically regulated in Section 37 Social Security Code Book V of the health insurance system. It serves to avoid or shorten hospital treatment or to ensure outpatient medical treatment. The transition from hospital to one’s own home is a burden for those in need of care, as it is associated with uncertainty and fear. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to implement a well-planned transition management to minimize this burden and to counteract supply disruptions. A needs-based, individual care helps the person in need of care to achieve more security and, in addition, to avoid follow-up costs.

This chapter deals with discharge management in nursing and is aimed at outpatient nursing services that specialize in outpatient ventilation. The discharge management described here does not correspond to professional case management, which requires a minimum of 210 h of further training.

The German Society for Case and Care Management (DGCC) describes case management as follows:

Case management is a procedure in human services and their organisation for the purpose of adequately managing the necessary support, treatment, accompaniment, promotion and care of people in individual cases. At the same time, the approach to action is a programme according to which service processes in a system of care and in individual areas of the social and health care system can be managed effectively and efficiently. (DGCC 2016)

Only a few nursing services have a case manager, but they can still design a successful discharge management and thus ensure that gaps in care are prevented in order to keep the burden on the patient as low as possible. For this purpose, it is necessary to describe and execute all processes in detail. All employees should know these procedures and implement them consistently. In addition to the legal requirements, all necessary steps are described below.