Coordinate safe, timely discharges by automating checklists, multi-agency communication, and post-discharge follow-up to reduce delayed transfers of care.
Delayed transfers of care (DTOC) cost the NHS an estimated 900 million per year. Discharge is delayed because medication is not prepared, transport is not booked, community services are not notified, or the patient simply was not identified as medically fit for discharge early enough. These failures are coordination failures, not clinical ones.
Ward teams rely on consultant ward rounds to confirm medical fitness, meaning discharge planning starts too late in the day to arrange same-day departure.
Social care, community nursing, pharmacy, and transport each operate in separate systems, resulting in handoff delays and duplicated communication.
Discharge summaries, medication lists, and care plans are completed inconsistently, leading to readmissions and GP complaints.
Once the patient leaves the ward, there is no mechanism to confirm that community services were mobilised or that the patient is safe at home.
Purpose-built capabilities — not generic templates you have to work around.
Configurable checklists by discharge pathway (simple, complex, continuing healthcare) ensure every dependency is tracked and assigned.
Shared task board visible to ward staff, pharmacy, social care, transport, and community teams with real-time status updates.
EDD is set on admission and tracked daily. Variance from EDD triggers escalation and requires a recorded reason.
Pharmacy, transport, and community teams receive automatic alerts when their part of the discharge process is triggered.
Dashboard showing DTOC hours by ward, reason code, and responsible organisation — feeding into system-wide patient flow reporting.
An expected discharge date is recorded within 24 hours of admission, triggering a countdown and initial discharge planning tasks.
Based on the patient's discharge pathway, tasks are automatically assigned to ward staff, pharmacy, social care, and transport.
Each team updates their task status in real time. Blockers are flagged immediately and escalated to the discharge coordinator.
The patient leaves with completed documentation. The system records actual discharge time and any variance from EDD.
Automated tasks confirm that community services were mobilised. A patient welfare check is triggered at 24 and 72 hours post-discharge.
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Yes. Social care providers, community nursing teams, and transport operators can be given secure portal access to view and update their assigned tasks without accessing the wider clinical system.
Complex discharges (e.g. continuing healthcare, section 117 aftercare) use extended checklists with additional approval gates and multi-agency sign-off steps, all configurable per pathway type.
SwiftCase can operate as the discharge coordination layer within your existing patient flow ecosystem, feeding bed-state data to your command centre or operating as a standalone solution.
When a discharge is delayed beyond the EDD, the system requires a structured DTOC reason code aligned with the NHS England national dataset, which feeds directly into your monthly SITREP reporting.
See how automated checklists and multi-agency coordination reduce delayed transfers of care and free up beds faster.
