Defining Best Practices for Interhospital Transfers

Researchers from CRICO’s member organization Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center identified six critical elements of IHT: (1) initiation of transfer request, (2) the management of transfer request and information exchange, (3) updates between transfer acceptance and patient transport, (4) transport, (5) patient admission and information availability, and (6) measurement, evaluation, and feedback. Improvement opportunities were found in all elements. Conclusion: The standardization of these six critical elements may improve the safety of IHTs.

Related

The AMC PSO has published a guideline document called A Patient Safety Framework for Inter-hospital Transfers, Recommendations of the Inter-hospital Task Force.

Citation for the Full-text Article

Reichheld A, Yang J, Sokol-Hessner L, Quinn G. Defining best practices for interhospital transfers. Journal for Healthcare Quality. 2021 February 16 [Published Ahead of Print]. doi: 10.1097/JHQ.0000000000000293