Within-facility (Intra-facility) Transfer Navigator
The Transfer navigator is used when a patient's attachment changes from one primary hospital service (e.g., "hospital medicine") to a different hospital services (e.g., "critical care") within the same facility. The service transfer may involve a department (hospital location) change (e.g., ward unity to ICU), a bed change or no location change. Similarly, the service transfer may or may not coincide with a change in the patient's level of care (e.g., acute to critical care).
The intra-facility (within facility) transfer navigator is accessed from the "Transfer within Current Facility" section of the "Discharge Transfer Gateway" activity available within all charts opened to inpatient encounters.
Intra-facility Transfer Navigator
All tasks needed for a safe and complete transfer can be accessed from the Transfer Navigator, both simplifying prescriber work and ensuring that review, action and documentation tasks occur in the right order.
Patients may be transferred from one hospital bed or ward to another bed or ward, or even from one provider team to another within the same hospital service, without need for an Intra-facility Transfer workflow. Likewise, changes in level of care, without a change in hospital service, do not require a Transfer workflow. In these cases, clinicians and bed management staff take care of the patient location and/or level of care with different orders and workflows. The Transfer navigator is used ONLY if there is a change in the hospital service accountable for a patient's care.
Other Inter-Facility Transfer (IFT) workflows pertain to patients transferred between two distinct facilities.
The most important intra-facility Transfer steps, in order, include the following:
Updating the hospital problem list
Cleaning up current orders and cosigning any outstanding orders that are the responsibility of the sending team
Re-validating the Best Possible Medication History (BPMH, home medications)
Placing and holding transfer orders
Generating a transfer note for summative communication to the receiving team