A hospital discharge checklist for an elderly parent
Discharge day compresses a week of decisions into about forty minutes, most of them spent waiting for a wheelchair. The checklist below is organized by when things must happen, because that’s the part the hospital’s paperwork rarely tells you.
Before you leave the building
Get the medication list printed. Not read aloud. Printed. This list supersedes the pill bottles at home: doses change in the hospital, medications get stopped, new ones appear. Medicare’s own discharge checklist puts the medication review near the top for a reason.
Have someone walk the list with you, out loud, one medicine at a time. Which are new? Which changed? Which of the ones at home should stop? Write the answers on the list itself.
Ask for the warning signs in plain words. Every discharge packet has a “call the doctor if” section. Ask the nurse to point to it and translate anything unclear, and ask which number to call after hours, because it is usually not the same number.
Get one name. “Who do I call this week with questions?” A name and a direct line, not a department. Write it on the front of the folder.
Confirm the practical arrangements before the wheelchair arrives: which pharmacy the prescriptions went to and whether it’s open; who orders any equipment (walker, commode, oxygen, shower chair) and when it’s delivered; whether home health or therapy was arranged and when they will call you; which follow-up appointments are already booked and which are yours to book.
Photograph every page before you leave. Paper goes missing between the lobby and the kitchen counter. Photos don’t.
Tonight
Set out tonight’s and tomorrow morning’s medicines from the new list, not from habit. Put the warning-signs page somewhere everyone in the house will see it. The refrigerator is a fine tradition. Confirm someone is staying the first night, or say out loud why that’s genuinely not needed. Then stop. Everything else is a tomorrow problem.
The first 72 hours
Prescriptions filled and reconciled. Bring the discharge list to the pharmacy and ask the pharmacist to check it against what your parent already takes. If two medicines look like the same drug under different names, ask before the next dose. This question is answered free, by phone, all day.
Follow-ups actually on a calendar. The packet often says “follow up with cardiology in 2 weeks” and leaves the phone call to you. Those unbooked appointments are the ones that fall through. Book them now, while the discharge is fresh enough that schedulers can see the referral.
Equipment and home health confirmed real. “It was ordered” and “it arrived” are different facts. If a visiting nurse was promised, you should have a phone call or a visit scheduled by day three; if you don’t, call the number on the front of the folder.
The helpers briefed. Whoever shares the caregiving (siblings, a neighbor, an aide) needs the new medication schedule and the warning signs, not a summary from memory.
The one-week check
Sit down once, seven days in, and ask: are the medicines being taken as written, is anything on the warning list happening, did every promised service materialize, and who is confirmed for each ride to each follow-up. Ten minutes of checking beats a month of assuming.
This is organizational help, not medical advice. Your parent’s discharge instructions are specific to them. Where anything here differs from what their care team said, the care team wins.