Preparing Long-Term Inpatients for Community Re-Entry

Economic pressures have increasingly led clinicians to confront the clinical reality that extended inpatient stays can lead to excessive dependence upon the hospital and reluctance or refusal of discharge, referred to as institutionalization. For very chronic inpatients, connections to family, friends, their old neighborhood may be minimal or nonexistent. Reluctance to leave the hospital may be seen as a reasonable response to the perceived "threat" of discharge. In this article, we discuss strategies we have utilized to assist long-term inpatients to consider leaving the hospital, to reintroduce them to the community and to facilitate their transition back to the community.