Patients who are discharged from the hospital receive a follow-up call from their primary care practice after
they get home. The nurse will ask if the patient has filled any prescriptions or if he or she has any questions
about the discharge instructions, Gilbert said. If a patient can’t afford the prescribed medication, the nurse will
help direct him or her to affordable options.
Compared to 2010, in 2014, telephone encounters with patients increased 16 percent—that’s more than 15,400
additional encounters annually. Electronic health records help the ED communicate with the primary care
practices.
Such follow-up calls can prevent a return to the emergency room, Gilbert said.
“We’ve had a couple of incidents where that was prevented,” he said. One elderly patient had left the
emergency department with high blood pressure, but had told the staff that she was taking blood pressure
medication. When the patient’s primary care practice reviewed the record shortly after she went home, they
realized that the patient had forgotten she was no longer being prescribed the blood pressure medicine.
“They got her into the office right away,” he said, adding that if the discrepancy hadn’t been caught, the patient
could have had a stroke. “That’s a success story.”
Franklin Memorial Hospital
Erika Bohlman, a triage nurse at Franklin Memorial Hospital, asks a patient about her medical history.
