Discharge Alert:  A Quality Improvement Initiative

Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is often avoidable in hospitalized patients because proven prevention strategies have been established for patients at risk.  Since most VTE prophylaxis has focused upon protection of high risk patients at the time for hospital admission, there is a need to focus on VTE prophylaxis at the time of hospital discharge.

Discharge Alert aims to reliably and quickly identify patients being discharged within 48 hours who are at high risk for VTE.  These identifed patients will be randomized into a control group and an intervention group.  The physician of the intervention group will be verbally (as opposed to electronically) alerted to the patient's high risk for VTE.  Both groups of patients are monitored for 90 days to verify all outcomes.

This quality improvement initiative will determine whether verbally alerting physicians about the importance of continued VTE prophylaxis immediately prior to the planned hospital discharge will lower the incidence of outpatient VTE.