Virtual discharge counseling: An assessment of scalability of a novel patient educational process across a multi-site urban emergency department

Background: Inadequate counseling at patient discharge from the emergency department can lead to adverse patient outcomes. Virtual discharge counseling can address gaps in discharge counseling and improve patients' understanding of instructions.

Methods: A previously established virtual discharge counseling program was scaled across three emergency departments and expanded to 13 diagnoses. Utilizing a standardized protocol and script, counselors performed virtual discharge counseling via a remote, secure teleconference platform in the patients' preferred language.

Results: Virtual discharge counseling was performed with 166 patients. COVID-19, back pain, and headache were the most frequent diagnoses. The median counseling time was 14 min. Median counseling time for English was 11 min, versus 20 min for other languages (p < 0.001). Counseling times were the longest for COVID-19 and diabetes (18 min for each).

Conclusion: We demonstrate the scalability of a virtual discharge counseling program. Our findings can assist in targeting virtual discharge counseling resources for limited English-proficiency patients and specific diagnoses that require longer counseling times.