Patients’ and caregivers’ perspectives in determining discharge readiness from home health

•Patient and caregiver perspectives on readiness for home health discharge is critical to evidenced-based tool development.•The patients' ability to care for themselves was of paramount importance to patients and caregivers prior to discharge.•This work adds to a growing body of evidence to develop clinical decision support for home care discharge readiness.•The factors identified can guide home health clinicians on important items to consider when determining discharge readiness. There are no national, empirically derived clinical decision support tools to assist the interprofessional home health team in determining readiness for discharge from skilled home health. Eliciting patient and family caregiver perspectives around readiness for home health discharge is integral to developing tools that address their needs in this decision-making process. The purpose of this study was to describe the factors home health patients and their family caregivers perceive as critical when determining readiness for discharge from services. A qualitative descriptive study was conducted among skilled home health recipients and their family caregivers who were either recently discharged or recertified for additional care from two different Medicare-certified skilled home health agencies. Nine themes emerged: self-care ability, functional status, status of condition(s) and symptoms, presence of a caregiver, support for the caregiver, connection to community resources/support, safety needs of the home environment addressed, adherence to the prescribed regimen, and care coordination.