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Next Step in Care: Family Caregivers & Health Care Professionals Working Together

For Health Care Providers

Project RED Tool 7: Understanding and Enhancing the Role of Family Caregivers in the Re-Engineered Discharge

Project RED (Re-Engineered Discharge) is an intervention that helps hospitals create safe and effective discharges. This Project RED tool formalizes the role family caregivers play in a successful transition from the hospital by building upon their relationship with the patient and identifying and addressing their needs for training and support.

It structures the process of working with family caregivers into five steps:

  1. Identifying the family caregiver,
  2. Assessing the family caregiver's needs,
  3. Integrating the family caregiver's needs into the after-hospital care plan,
  4. Sharing family caregiver information with the next setting of care, and
  5. Providing telephone reinforcement of the discharge plan.

Project RED Tool 7: Understanding and Enhancing the Role of Family Caregivers in the Re-Engineered Discharge download pdf

The tool, Understanding and Enhancing the Role of Family Caregivers in the Re-Engineered Discharge, is one of seven chapters in the Project RED toolkit and the first addition to the toolkit since its launch in 2007. Project RED—shown in a randomized controlled trial to reduce hospital utilization by 30 percent—is used by hospitals throughout the United States to minimize human and system errors in the discharge process.

To download the entire Project RED toolkit or read more about it, please visit Boston University's Project RED toolkit website page.

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