Patient functional status changes during hospitalization: impact on early discharge planning.

Purpose/objectives: The purpose of this study was to inform the discharge planning process by determining differences in functional status from admission to discharge of adults hospitalized for either medical or surgical reasons.

Design: The study design was a secondary analysis of data originally collected for a discharge planning study.

Sample/setting: The primary study included 304 adult patients hospitalized at 2 hospitals in a large midwestern healthcare delivery system.