Solution
Discharge Companion: help people find their next step at home
Bring discharge resources, family communication, and team follow-up into one care ecosystem under your organization’s name. Choose the tools you need and agree how they fit your systems and discharge workflow.
Leaving hospital can bring new questions. Help people find their care instructions, the right contact, and support in their community.
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Built around the work of leaving hospital
Discharge Companion brings together genus tools for resources, communication, and follow-up. Your team chooses what belongs in its discharge pathway.
Start with the people doing the work: those returning home, families, clinicians, and community partners. Their questions can help identify where instructions or handoffs need to be clearer.
Try a focused preview and learn from it
Explore AI-assisted resources using sample people and notes. Your team can review responses, identify limitations, and decide which tasks fit its care procedures.
Agree what would make a pilot useful before moving into live care. Include clinical review, access, escalation, and the people responsible for follow-up.
Give routine questions a clear route
Choose the questions your resources can help answer and the ones that should go directly to a person. Review whether the approach makes the work easier for staff and people leaving hospital.
- Keep discharge explanations and contact details easy to find.
- Use team feedback to identify repeated questions, missing information, and extra work.
Make room for the conversation
A resource can help someone prepare a question. The conversation with their care team still matters.
- Use plain explanations that staff can review and people can revisit.
- Ask whether the wording feels useful and respectful.
- Review feedback alongside staff workload before expanding the approach.
Support the transition home
A text link can give people a way back to your resources after the bedside conversation.
- Introduce the resources before discharge and check whether the person can open them.
- Keep the clinical team’s instructions and contact routes visible.
- Include practical information about follow-up, transport, and local support.
Help people find the information they need
Organize resources around the questions people bring home, including medicines, meals, appointments, and costs.
- Link to the health system’s portal for the person’s own care instructions.
- Explain how to find the medication list and reach the team with questions.
- Provide contacts for billing, benefits, and financial assistance.
Connect with local support
A local directory can help people find transport, meals, and other support. Keep contact details and service information up to date.
- Choose resources relevant to your community and identify who maintains each listing.
- Ask whether people could reach the service and what got in the way.
Offer more than one way to read and listen
Review language, text size, audio, and device needs with the people who will use the service. Agree which options are supported in your deployment.
- Test the actual reading and listening experience with users.
- Have qualified reviewers check translated care information.
- Keep an appropriate phone or in-person route available.
Use prompts that leave room for choice
carePhysics offers ideas for designing clearer explanations and invitations. Test whether those ideas help in your setting.
- Give people time to ask questions and choose how to take part.
- Notice when wording, timing, or access makes the next step harder.
Help people prepare their questions
People may want to revisit an unfamiliar term or write down a question after they get home. Make it easy to return to the care team’s instructions.
- Keep clinical instructions separate from general educational material.
- Make the route to a person clear when an answer is missing or uncertain.
- Ask what remains unclear instead of assuming that opening a resource means understanding it.
Use reviewed resources to explain terminology and help people find their care team’s contact and escalation instructions.
Use research to ask better design questions
Research on communication and care transitions can inform a pathway. It does not establish the results of a particular Discharge Companion deployment.
- Choose resources relevant to the person’s care instructions.
- Check understanding through conversation.
- Review usefulness over time.
Review the populations, interventions, and limitations behind each source.
Agree which outcomes matter locally and how you will assess them.
Combine records with the experiences of people returning home and the teams supporting them.
Support everyday life after discharge
Recovery takes place around meals, travel, family responsibilities, and other daily needs. Let those practical concerns shape the resources you choose.
- Include relevant local support alongside health information.
- Ask the person who they want involved.
- Check whether the proposed next step is realistic for them.
Illustrative example: Pam finds her next step
In this fictional example, Pam opens her discharge resources at home to prepare for a follow-up call. It illustrates a possible configuration, not a patient result.
- Pam finds the hospital’s portal link and the number for her care team.
- She writes down a term she wants explained.
- She checks the transport directory before arranging her next visit.
Care instructions: Link to the team’s reviewed materials and explain how to reach someone with a question.
Appointments: Show where the health system provides booking information.
Practical support: Include current contacts for transport, food, home support, and financial assistance.
Follow-up: Ask Pam what she could find and what still needs explaining.
Bring community resources into the pathway
Connect discharge information with local services people may need. Your team and community partners can decide which links, contacts, and follow-up steps belong together.
- Choose resources with the people who will use them.
- Clarify who responds to a referral or question.
- Share feedback only within agreed roles, permissions, and arrangements.
Language and access: Review the formats and translations your community needs.
Partner information: Agree who keeps service listings and contact details current.
Learning together: Ask whether people reached the service and what made the handoff easier or harder.
Illustrative example: Someone finds a transport service, calls to check availability, and tells the navigator whether it meets their needs.
Walk through your branded preview
A standard branded preview follows within 24 hours of agreeing on the initial scope. Use sample data to explore the person’s experience and the team’s work together.
- Try the agreed resource pages and contact routes.
- Review the tools selected for your team.
- Record confusing steps and missing information.
Invite people who receive care, family representatives, and frontline staff to comment on the proposed flow.
Review their suggestions together and explain which changes you will make.
Keep preview feedback separate from evidence about live service outcomes.
Build the pilot in stages
Begin with a small review group, then widen participation as the team is ready. Agree the timing and purpose of each stage.
First, review the sample pathway with clinical, community, and operational leads.
Next, invite staff and advisors to test the wording and flow.
Before a live pilot, agree consent, access, support responsibilities, and how results will be reviewed.
From a preview to an agreed deployment
A preview helps you decide what fits. A live deployment also needs agreed content, supported system connections, access, training, and operating responsibilities.
- Agree supported connections and handoffs.
- Define who maintains resources and responds to questions.
Carry forward the branding and reviewed resources that remain useful.
Confirm the work needed with your IT, clinical, and operational teams.
Set the rollout schedule around that scope.
Review the first live pathway before adding more.
Add tools as needs become clearer
Start with a useful pathway, then consider additional resources or tools as your community’s needs change.
- Review new requests with the people using the service.
- Confirm availability, integration scope, and responsibilities before adding a tool.
Choose the outcomes you want to evaluate
Patient experience, access to support, team workload, and costs are useful areas to examine. Treat improvement as something to evaluate in your setting.
- Ask whether people can find and understand the next step.
- Check whether community referrals lead to accessible support.
- Measure the work involved for staff as well as the activity recorded.
Listen to people returning home about what helped and what was missing.
Clinical outcomes, including readmissions, need an appropriate evaluation; resource use alone cannot establish an effect.
Compare workflow effort before and after the change.
Include concerns, extra work, and uneven access in the review.
Use what you learn to refine or stop an approach.
Learn from records and from people
Agree which records and feedback can help your team assess the pathway. A count can show what happened; a conversation may help explain why.
Ask people whether they found useful information and reached the support they wanted.
Review feedback with the teams responsible for the next step.
Share only the information each partner is permitted to receive.
Research that informs the approach
Our research pages examine communication, engagement, and community support, including the limits of the evidence. Use them to inform design and local evaluation.
Research about an intervention or care setting is not evidence that genus software produces the same results.
Review the source, population, and limitations before applying a finding.
Visit the Research area for sources and questions to explore with your team.
A preview, then a scope and price you can review
Preview Edition: a standard branded preview at no cost, using sample people and notes.
For a pilot or live deployment, agree pricing with the tools, content, connections, and support you need.
- Identify the resources and pathways to include.
- Discuss customization and ongoing support before rollout.
Use the preview to assess the agreed features and workflow.
Request a written scope and price for the next stage.
Start with a 30-minute conversation. A standard branded preview follows within 24 hours of agreeing on the initial scope.
Learning from the transition home
The Henry Ford careVoice pilot is part of the history behind genus. It raised practical questions about how technology fits a conversation at the bedside and the move home.
Those questions remain useful: can someone open the resource, understand its purpose, and find a person when they need help?
- Make the next step understandable.
- Keep a human contact route visible.
- Build on what people tell you.
Text links and browser-based resources offer ways to introduce information without an app-store download.
A simpler entry point still needs clear instructions and a useful destination.
Invite feedback from people returning home, families, staff, and community partners as you refine the experience.