Hospitals Are Not Hotels: High-Quality Discharges Occur Around the Clock

High-quality health care is judged by its safety, effectiveness, efficiency, timeliness, patient centeredness, and equity.¹ In practice, recent hospital quality efforts have focused on safety, high reliability, clinical pathways, patient flow, and reduction of readmissions,² which link to the 6 domains of quality and drive high-value care. Because it receives much attention, this discussion focuses on measuring the quality of patient flow, with particular focus on the discharge process.