Current situation and problems inherent to discharge planning in practice

Discharge planning is defined as "an interdisciplinary hospital-wide process that should be available to aid patients and their families in developing a feasible post-hospital plan of care". Although the recognition about the importance of discharge planning is increasing, many problems in its practice still remain. In this paper, we focused on the following major considerations as to the implementation of discharge planning: (1) identification of the targets for discharge planning (i.e. screening for high-risk patients), (2) specific methods of discharge planning (i.e. standardization and evaluation of discharge planning), and (3) construction of the system for discharge planning (i.e. identification of the discharge planner).