Do Morning Discharges from the Hospital Improve Patient Flow?

Many hospital systems promote morning discharges to improve patient flow and shorten length of stay (LOS). The premise is that morning discharges make more beds available earlier in the day, which facilitates movement of patients from the emergency department to a hospital bed and allows more-efficient treatment of patients admitted to those beds. In this retrospective cohort study, researchers reviewed data on 190,000 patients who were admitted to internal medicine in seven hospitals in Ontario, Canada, during 7 years.

No significant association was found between a hospital's frequency of morning discharges (before noon) and the hospital's median LOS, emergency department LOS, 30-day readmission rate, or in-hospital mortality. The lack of a…