Improving patient flow, reducing Average Length of stay and readmissions to hospital are key objective of the HSE, National Acute Medicine Programme, and Department of Health. Devolving discharge to competent members of the Multidisciplinary team is a nationally agreed target for acute hospitals. It was hypothesized that Criteria Led Discharge (CLD) - a tool to support safe, timely and effective discharge may be a suitable discharge planning tool to support devolving of the discharge process by competent interdisciplinary team members in Irish hospitals. Planning and testing in one diagnostic group – COPD -began in February 2016. If successfully tested it will be adopted as an alternative Model of discharge planning for Acute Hospital Services in Ireland.
