The discharge summary is a document that summarizes the treatment and progress of a hospitalized patient, and is intended not only for recording but also for sharing information among the healthcare professionals involved in the case. Therefore, the discharge summary needs to include indicators and criteria that can be shared by multiple professions, and the Activities of Daily Living (ADL) is a typical example of this. However, ADL assessments are not always performed by the rehabilitation department. However, while ADL assessment is easy to implement in hospitals with well-developed rehabilitation departments, it is often difficult to implement in smaller medical institutions due to a lack of specialized staff, and there are some issues in standardizing the ADL assessment on the discharge summary.
Community healthcare encompasses not only hospitals, clinics, and facilities, but also dispensing pharmacies, dental clinics, visiting nurse stations, in-home support offices, and many other types of businesses. In recent years, with the spread of electronic medical records, medical record access systems (regional medical coordination networks) have developed within the community, making it possible to access medical records in the various industries mentioned above. The discharge summary is a key tool for understanding patients, and the number of medical record accesses has been increasing. In particular, hospitalization is a valuable opportunity to collect information necessary for ACP, especially in the context of an aging society that is becoming more death-oriented and where advance care planning (ACP) is becoming more important. The discharge summary is expected to include episodes that trigger ACP.