Patient discharge is the final process in a patient's stay in the hospital. Instead of being smooth process, often the discharge process creates pain for the patient as well as the hospital. The delay often is unpredictable and can span between 2 hours to a full day depending on how insurance clearance process is handled. The insurer-hospitals’ meeting on 9th of this month (October, 2025) has this process under discussion for the right reasons.
The delay for the hospital, means the room is occupied, instead of being prepared for the next patient. It also means pain and added room rental bill for the patient. Economic Times post claims, the delay is attributed to, mainly,
- Legacy IT systems
- Bureaucratic treatment file movement
- “Avoidable” insurer queries
- Final bill different from initially approved amount
- Distrust, inefficient coordination between hospitals, insurers
We also found multiple earlier reports that highlight the pain of discharge process.
Here is a short summary:
| # | Study (Authors / Location) | Setting & Sample | Key Metrics (Delay, Time) | Main Findings / Causes of Delay |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Reducing discharge delays: using DMAIC approach in a tertiary care hospital (Sharma et al., Dehradun, Uttarakhand) (IJCMPH) | Tertiary-care hospital, North India; 1,000 discharged patients | Pre-intervention: discharge summary ~235 ± 78 min; financing clearance ~436 ± 451 min; total ~329 ± 389 min. Post-intervention: summary ~72.6 ± 42 min; clearance ~162.6 ± 95 min; total ~208.1 ± 122.9 min. (IJCMPH) | Use of DMAIC (process improvement) reduced delays significantly. Bottlenecks: financing clearance, summary preparation. |
| 2 | A cross‑sectional study on delay in discharge in a tertiary care hospital in the Malwa region of Punjab (Sharma et al., Bathinda, Punjab) (CiteDrive) | Tertiary hospital; n = 250 patients | ~80% of participants faced delay; ~40% spent more than 5 h to complete discharge. Average time nearly double the standard set by National Accreditation Board for Hospitals & Healthcare Providers (NABH) standards. (CiteDrive) | Delays at almost all steps except “return of medicines”; patient dissatisfaction high (only ~20% fully satisfied). |
| 3 | (Indian hospital, general ward) (Annals of Pediatric Surgery) | Paediatric surgery general ward; n = 100 sequential discharges | Self‐pay group average turn-around time (TAT) ~332 min; credit billing group ~397 min. NABH standard was 180 min (self pay) / 240 min (credit billing) but delays existed. (Annals of Pediatric Surgery) | Credit billing (insurance/third-party) patients experienced larger delays. Main delay causes: billing process, insurance processing systems. |
| 4 | Pristyn Care survey study (India wide) – “Five out of 10 patients face discharge delays due to medical insurance claims” (ETHealthworld.com) | Survey across major Indian cities; size ~4,000 respondents. (Healthcare Radius) | ~50% of patients report discharge delay due to claim processing time. ~40% attribute delay to hospital administrative processes; ~25% to lack of coordination between hospitals & insurers. (ETHealthworld.com) | Claim/insurance-related delays are major contributor. Even with high cashless coverage, process inefficiencies persist. |
| 5 | Delay in discharge and its impact on unnecessary hospital bed occupancy (not India-specific, but relevant for comparison) (BioMed Central) | Study of 99 inpatient episodes (elective & acute) in hospital over 4 months | Delays contributed 271 unnecessary days (19% of total bed-occupancy days) due to discharge process delays. (BioMed Central) | Highlights impact of discharge delay on bed occupancy and hospital efficiency; though not strictly India, gives useful context. |
There is no magic bullet, otherwise the problem would have been solved by now. ET article identified a few suggestion to help the process. Among them are:
- Advance intimation of discharge by hospitals
- Efficient information exchange to cut down admin delays
- Investigations by insurers should start earlier
Even others have pointed out other ways but bulk of them focus on the process improvement and better coordination between the hospital, TPA (Third-party Agency) and Insurance provider. There is no doubt that most of the time clearance process is stuck in the interaction chain between those three entities.
But it is also observed that RTLS does enable faster discharge by automating information flow which otherwise are done manually inside the various entities in the hospital.
How RTLS helped Hospitals reduce discharge delay
A hospital in Texas (CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Hospital‑Westover Hills) reported that after deploying RTLS tagged bracelets:
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The system notified staff of open beds 2 hours 40 minutes sooner than manual entry. Healthcare IT News
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They calculated this saved 2,339 hours of bed-prep/“pull next patient” time over 12 months for 4,000+ discharges. Healthcare IT News
Here are a few ways a RTLS helps a hospital to reduce the discharge delay:
Faster bed/room turnover
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When a patient leaves, an RTLS tag or location sensor can automatically notify housekeeping/cleaning/bed-prep teams, so they start the cleaning/preparation of the bed immediately (rather than waiting for manual notification). This reduces idle time from when a discharge is medically cleared to when the bed is ready for the next patient (or when the current patient exit tasks wrap up).
- RTLS gives live location/status of patients, staff, equipment; this allows staff to see which patients are ready to go, which beds are vacant, and which pieces of equipment are available. BioMed Central+1
- Delay in “waiting for transport” or “waiting for discharge summary" or "pharmacy clearance” often caused by lack of visibility. For example, if the system shows that a patient is ready but the porter or transport team hasn’t been dispatched, it causes unnecessary delay. An automated notification enables faster transition between these phases.
Of course even with all these, bulk of the delay is not going to reduce more than 20% if the friction in documentation sharing, interaction and coordination between the three parties are not addressed. However even if 20% of the discharge time is shortened it creates a big saving for the Hospital in reducing average Length of Stay (LOS) for a patient
A California Healthcare Foundation study found, "For a 275-bed hospital, reducing the average length of stay by four hours is equivalent to increasing physical capacity by ten beds".
RTLS is slowly becoming integral to the improved cost and operational efficiency in a hospital. Here we showed how it also improves patient discharge latency.