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SAFER Guidance

The SAFER guidance document below provides a good practice guide to promote safe and timely discharge, improve patient flow and prevent unnecessary waiting for patients, through a combined set of simple rules for adult inpatient wards. Planning a prompt discharge should begin on admission, wherever possible, and involve patients, their families and carers from the outset – making it everyone’s business.

The outcomes set out in this guidance cannot be delivered by practitioners working in isolation. The best outcomes are delivered when health, social services, housing, wider statutory and third sector organisations work in partnership and offer an integrated approach in the wider context of what health and social care can do together.