Trial reportJournal of general internal medicine2009
Adequacy of hospital discharge summaries in documenting tests with pending results and outpatient follow-up providers.
Trial report in Journal of general internal medicine, 2009. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 41 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
41 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- A systematic literature review and narrative synthesis on the risks of medical discharge letters for patients' safety.BMC health services research · 2019Pooled it
- A Systematic Review of Interventions to Follow-Up Test Results Pending at Discharge.Journal of general internal medicine · 2018Pooled it
- A systematic review on the effect of the organisation of hospital discharge on patient health outcomes.BMJ open · 2016Pooled it
- The Impact of Automated Notification on Follow-up of Actionable Tests Pending at Discharge: a Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial.Journal of general internal medicine · 2018Trial
- Hospital variation in quality of discharge summaries for patients hospitalized with heart failure exacerbation.Circulation. Cardiovascular quality and outcomes · 2015Trial
- Impact of automated alerts on follow-up of post-discharge microbiology results: a cluster randomized controlled trial.Journal of general internal medicine · 2012Trial
- Expert-Rated Documentary Quality of AI-Assisted Hospital Discharge Reports: A Retrospective Paired Comparison with Physician-Written Reports.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Edge-Hosted LLM-Assisted NICU Discharge Summary Generation: Field-Level Evaluation Using a Clinician-Defined Rubric.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Review
- Large language model discharge summary preparation using real-world electronic medical record data shows promise.Internal medicine journal · 2025Article
- Bridging Inpatient and Outpatient Care: A Scoping Review on Discharge Summary Documentation Timeliness and Quality.Journal of Brown hospital medicine · 2025Review
- Review
- The Influence of Nurse Education Level on Hospital Readmissions-A Cost-Effectiveness Analysis.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Why Test Results Are Still Getting "Lost" to Follow-up: a Qualitative Study of Implementation Gaps.Journal of general internal medicine · 2022Article
- Identifying the mechanisms that contribute to safe and effective electronic test result management systems- a multisite qualitative study.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2021Article
- Structure, content, unsafe abbreviations, and completeness of discharge summaries: A retrospective analysis in a University Hospital in Austria.Journal of evaluation in clinical practice · 2021Article
- Is the routine health information system ready to support the planned national health insurance scheme in South Africa?Health policy and planning · 2021Article
- Reaching the summit of discharge summaries: a quality improvement project.BMJ open quality · 2021Article
- Variation in electronic test results management and its implications for patient safety: A multisite investigation.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2020Article
- Validation of an algorithm based on administrative data to detect new onset of atrial fibrillation after cardiac surgery.BMC medical research methodology · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundPoor communication of tests whose results are pending at hospital discharge can lead to medical errors.
objectiveTo determine the adequacy with which hospital discharge summaries document tests with pending results and the appropriate follow-up providers.
designRetrospective study of a randomly selected sample PATIENTS: Six hundred ninety-six patients discharged from two large academic medical centers, who had test results identified as pending at discharge through queries of electronic medical records. INTERVENTION AND MEASUREMENTS: Each patient's discharge summary was reviewed to identify whether information about pending tests and follow-up providers was mentioned. Factors associated with documentation were explored using clustered multivariable regression models. MAIN
resultsDischarge summaries were available for 99.2% of 668 patients whose data were analyzed. These summaries mentioned only 16% of tests with pending results (482 of 2,927). Even though all study patients had tests with pending results, only 25% of discharge summaries mentioned any pending tests, with 13% documenting all pending tests. The documentation rate for pending tests was not associated with level of experience of the provider preparing the summary, patient's age or race, length of hospitalization, or duration it took for results to return. Follow-up providers' information was documented in 67% of summaries.
conclusionDischarge summaries are grossly inadequate at documenting both tests with pending results and the appropriate follow-up providers.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.