Giving Compass' Take:

• After his wife's car crash, Adventist Health System's CEO Terry Shaw was inspired to create a care navigation program to smooth out the discharge process for patients and provide help scheduling future appointments.

• How can hospitals improve their discharge process? What information should discharged patients leave the hospital with? 

• Read about this transitional care model that has replaced the typical discharge process for the chronically ill.

Two years ago, a truck barreled through a red light at 50 miles per hour and rammed into Paula Shaw’s pickup, totaling it and knocking her out. Her husband Terry, who would become the CEO of 46-hospital Adventist Health System 6 months later, got a call informing him that she was unconscious in the emergency department.

She got great care in the hospital, but things got rough when it came time to leave. “I got handed this stack of discharge orders, and I went home with my wife and started to help her try to figure out how to get care out of the hospital, and it was a nightmare,” Terry Shaw says, “a nightmare.”

Read the full article about Adventist policy changes by Ellie Kincaid at Forbes.