on going home from the hospital. . .

We did it. We launched bedside discharge !!! After 18 months of planning and debating, all the teams came together to change the process. Monday night, I came home and completely collapsed on the couch – not tired from the complications of the day, but from the sheer anticipation of it all.

But it is going wonderfully – our turn around time has gone from 8 hours to less than 3 hours (and it is just the first week). There is not a massive queue in the entrance every evening at 6 pm. Our teams (finance and clinical) are talking to each other every day. We are problem solving in real time. People are smiling.

We had planned to launch on Monday, and then it became a public holiday (they happen at the last minute in Kenya sometimes), but the team decided to go ahead. IT came and moved all the computers Sunday night, and the team donned bright orange vests on Monday morning at 8 am. We had our first successful discharge by 10am, and then kept rolling from there. . .

Even today, we have fixed some small things, but not one person has mentioned going back to the way things were :). I can’t stop smiling as I type – so so grateful for this team that cut through the red tape and pushed forward to make this process possible –