Project RED (Re-Engineered Discharge)

Resource Location: https://www.bu.edu/fammed/projectred/

Project RED is supported by grants from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHBLI), the Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation, and the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.

Hospital based care transition model that coordinates the patient’s discharge plan throughout the hospitalization and then provides a post-acute discharge guide and follow-up telephone calls.

Project Re-Engineered Discharge is a research group at Boston University Medical Center that develops and tests strategies to improve the hospital discharge process in a way that promotes patient safety and reduces re-hospitalization rates. The RED (re-engineered discharge) intervention is founded on 12 discrete, mutually reinforcing components and has been proven to reduce rehospitalizations and yields high rates of patient satisfaction.  Virtual patient advocates are currently being tested in conjunction with the RED. In addition, Project RED has started to implement the re-engineered discharge at other hospitals serving diverse patient populations. We are also looking at the transitional needs from inpatient to outpatient care of specific populations (i.e., those with depressive symptoms). Finally, we are about to start a patient-centered project to create a tool that hospitals can use to discover factors (i.e., medical legal, social, etc.) in patients’ readmissions.