New Guide to Help Hospital Patients Take Care of Themselves

Taking Care of Myself: A Guide for When I Leave the Hospital
Taking Care of Myself: A Guide for When I Leave the Hospital is a guide to help patients care for themselves when they leave the hospital. The easy-to-read guide can be used by both hospital staff and patients during the discharge process and provides a way for patients to keep track their medication schedules, upcoming medical appointments, and important phone numbers.
The guide is available in English at: http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/goinghomeguide.htm and in Spanish at: http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/goinghomesp.htm. A fillable-PDF of the guide lets you put information about patients directly into the Guide. For a free hard copy of this guide, send an E-mail to the AHRQ Publications Clearinghouse at AHRQPubs@ahrq.hhs.gov or call 1-800-358-9295 and ask for AHRQ Publication No. 10-0059.
Taking Care of Myself: A Guide for When I Leave the Hospital is adapted from the Project RED (Re-Engineered Discharge), which was funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and operated by the Boston University Medical Center. Project RED showed that preparing patients to care for themselves when they leave the hospital can improve patient safety and reduce re-hospitalization rates. Giving patients an easy-to-understand discharge plan is 1 of 11 elements in the RED process. More information about Project RED and tools to support some of the other elements of the RED can be obtained at: https://www.bu.edu/fammed/projectred/
More detailed tools for implementing RED, and revisions of existing tools to ensure they are appropriate for diverse populations—especially patients with limited English proficiency—are now being developed. The tools are expected to be completed by late 2012 and will be posted on the AHRQ Web site and the Boston University Medical Center's Project RED Web site.