Post acute care: can hospitals do better with less?

Judging by reports in medical magazines and journals, 'early discharge schemes', better termed 'post acute care', are not popular with doctors. However, government policy encourages earlier discharge from hospital, so that the choice facing clinicians is to discharge patients early with support, or early without support, or deal with the consequences of length of stay overruns. Fortunately, government funding for post acute care is increasing. There is a strong rationale for post acute care based on better patient outcomes and cost-effectiveness, but these desirable results will only be achieved if scrupulous attention is paid to detail, as embodied in the 10 principles of post acute care. To function optimally, post acute care should be coordinated by the hospital which provided the acute care.