Achieving Effective Transitions of Care

Course Overview

Ensuring patient safety is a shared responsibility, accurate information is imperative to ensure appropriate uninterrupted care as patients move from one location to another. In addition, patients often are cared for by multiple members of the healthcare team in every 24-hour period, resulting in the need for effective communication as providers complete their shifts.

This course explores patient safety issues, communications, and handoff responsibilities specific to the resident's role in achieving effective transitions of care.

It offers physicians essential information that relates to the broad scope of transitions of care, emphasizing the need for multiple levels of communication and the untoward results when discontinuity occurs.

The program describes the National Transitions of Care Coalition (NTOCC) and the development of this coalition to address the Accountable Care Act and healthcare reform. The 7 Essential Intervention Categories defined by the NTOCC, are individually reviewed with detailed examples.

Learning Objectives

• Identify transitions of care responsibilities among residents under new tenets of healthcare reform
• Assess the role of the resident in performing effective and timely transitions of care with other members of the healthcare team