What to ask at a hospital discharge planning meeting

This guide is general information to help you organize, not medical advice. Take any question about your parent's health or medications to their doctor or pharmacist.

Before the meeting

• Ask the nurse or case manager when the discharge planning conversation will happen, and ask to be included by phone if you can't be there.
• Bring, or have photos of, your parent's current medication list and the names of their regular doctors and pharmacy.
• Know what home looks like: stairs, who is there during the day, and what help is already in place.

The questions to ask

1. What changed? Ask for the diagnosis and the reason for the stay in plain words, and what is different now from before the hospital.
2. What changed in the medications? Ask which medicines are new, which stopped and which doses changed, and ask for it in writing.
3. Who sees my parent next, and when? Get the follow-up appointments, and ask whether the hospital books them or you do.
4. What equipment or services are being ordered? Home health, therapy, a walker, oxygen: who is supplying it and when it arrives.
5. What help will my parent need at home, and for how long? Be honest about what the family can cover.
6. What should we watch for, and who do we call? Ask the team which changes mean calling the doctor and which mean calling 911.
7. Who is our contact after discharge? Get a name and a number for questions in the first few days.
8. Can we have the discharge summary? Ask for a copy, and ask that it go to your parent's primary doctor.

The first week home

• Fill new prescriptions before or on the day of discharge, and update the written medication list to match.
• Confirm the follow-up appointment is on the calendar and that transport is arranged.
• Make sure the primary doctor's office has the discharge summary.

Where Parsons at Home fits

This is the work a Care Coordinator does with you: keeping the list, the appointments and the doctors' offices lined up so nothing slips in the weeks after a hospital stay. We coordinate; we don't provide medical care.