Helping Hospitalized Elderly:

Abstract

The extent to which informal support systems substitute or provide linkages to formal support systems has been a source of controversy in many studies. Even the extent to which the formal system of discharge planning in acute care hospitals links patients to formal care systems afterwards is unclear and suggests that existing models are ideal and theoretical rather than established empirically. The Posthospital Support Study examined hospital-based discharge lanning and services received in the two month period after hospitalization for 170 patients with either heart conditions, or hip problems which required operations. Discharge planners were found to provide for services which were third-party reimbursable. Although planners adhered verbally to a wholistic model of assessing patient need and used an interdisciplinary planning structure, in actual planning they adhered to a narrow medical model while assuming an underlying social model of services from informal supports.