Montefiore Discharge Lounge Offers Stress-Free Transition from Hospital to Home While Saving 10,000+ Bed Hours

When Montefiore Einstein opened a discharge lounge on the Moses campus in June 2021, the goal was to enhance patient satisfaction and accelerate access to inpatient beds. Today, the hospital has exceeded its initial expectations, hitting a milestone of more than 10,000 bed hours saved, the equivalent of 62 additional inpatient beds, while also reporting high rates of patient engagement and satisfaction.

Elodia Mercier, BS, MS, RN-C, NE, Director, Nursing Throughput Operations, Montefiore Einstein, who has worked at Montefiore Einstein for almost 40 years, said Montefiore Einstein’s philosophy is to take a different approach and treat the discharge lounge as a medically-stable release area and not as an inpatient unit where medications, vital sign monitoring and cardiac carts are needed.

Approximately one-third of patients who are medically discharged from Montefiore Einstein’s inpatient units and emergency department are escorted to the lounge—which was designed in the spirit of an airport VIP lounge. There, certified nursing assistants (CNAs) greet patients and help make them comfortable with conversation, television and complimentary snacks. The average stay is about 35 minutes.

By having discharged patients stay in the lounge, staff can coordinate where family members or other transportation pick up patients leaving the hospital, avoiding parking expenses as well as confusion over where to go, since CNAs will escort patients to their waiting vehicles. Simultaneously, this different approach frees up in-hospital transportation waits, and allows housekeeping to come into newly vacated rooms and turn them over—decreasing wait times for inpatient beds.

CNAs then call patients the next day to ensure discharge plans are clear and that they are not having any issues. Any issues are immediately flagged and addressed by the patient’s medical team. The Montefiore discharge lounge serves, on average, 678 patients each month, almost six times the number of patients seen by other hospital lounges.

Peter P. Semczuk, DDS, MPH, Senior Vice President, Clinical Services and Executive Director, Moses Campus and Faculty Practice, Montefiore Einstein, said the discharge lounge offers a stress-free transition from hospital to home.

“In the short time it has been open, our customer-centric discharge lounge has led to increased patient satisfaction and an extra level of trust and confidence with our staff,” said Dr. Semczuk. “As a bonus, we are increasing access to lifesaving care for our Bronx community; it doesn’t get better than that.”

Earlier this fall, Montefiore Einstein nursing was highlighted for its incredible work during the New York Organization for Nursing Leadership’s (NYONL’s) 31st Annual Meeting and Leadership Conference in Tarrytown, NY. Mercier; Mohamed Yasin, MSN, MPH, RN, NE-BC, Administrative Nurse Manager, NW1 and NW3, Moses; and Obiageli Ubakanma, MBA, RN, BSN, WCC, Administrative Nurse Manager, NW5, Moses, presented a poster focused on the Moses Discharge Lounge.

Since the presentation, Mercier has been asked to consult on hospital discharge lounges at multiple respected hospitals and major academic medical centers on how to help them to think outside the box when it comes to approaching their own lounges. “As clinicians, we are naturally just driven to always think in the clinical arena instead of seeing about-to-be-discharged patients as resuming healthy living; we’ve solved that problem, so instead let’s focus on getting the patient safely and comfortably home,” Mercier said.