Cleveland Clinic Children's Outcomes

The Core 4 Elements for Safe Transitions promotes a reliable discharge process for patients to reduce readmissions at Cleveland Clinic. To decrease readmission rates, our Pediatric Hospital Medicine physicians complete four elements for safe transitions: admission medication reconciliation, discharge medication reconciliation, schedule clinically appropriate follow-up appointments prior to discharge, and complete patient discharge summaries prior to patient discharge.

Each year, the department focuses on one of the Core 4 Elements. The department has completed several projects to ensure compliance with medication reconciliation and follow-up appointment processes. While improving our compliance with these Core 4 Elements, we have sustained a service line readmission rate of approximately 2-3%. This represents a notable decrease in our readmission rate since adopting the Core 4 Elements (our 2015 readmission rate was 10%).

We encourage adherence to the Core 4 process for every patient, and look forward to expanding our quality improvement work in this area.