Patients who feel ready to leave the hospital are more satisfied

In a small study of hospitalized patients, those who felt ready to go home when they were discharged were more satisfied with the hospital and their caregivers than those who didn't feel ready to go. It may be useful to use patient readiness for discharge as one measure of quality of care, the authors write in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. Readiness for discharge was not, however, tied to how often patients were later readmitted to the hospital, they found.