In July 2025, a jury awarded a deceased man’s family over $1.7 million dollars in medical malpractice damages after determining that South Nassau Communities Hospital negligently discharged him. After an anterior cervical discectomy and fusion surgery (ACDF) at South Nassau Communities Hospital, the patient was discharged within three hours of observation, nearly five hours earlier than the initial order. In addition, the patient was instructed to call the doctor that night for medication instructions and not to drive. Most importantly, though, a key aspect of the follow-up care was missed: following ACDF procedures, patients experiencing swallowing or breathing difficulties may be developing life-threatening complications. This patient developed angioedema, swelling of the soft tissues in the neck, which rapidly became fatal without the immediate treatment he needed. Despite the seriousness of this complication risk, the patient was not clearly instructed to return to the hospital if he noticed symptoms. Even when his condition worsened, he still did not recognize the urgency of seeking treatment until it was too late. He passed away in his home later that night.
Stories like the South Nassau Communities Hospital case are not isolated tragedies. Research consistently shows that patients frequently leave health care settings without fully understanding their discharge instructions. Important information related to their care, including medications, follow-up plans, and symptom management, is often misinterpreted or forgotten shortly after discharge. In emergency departments (EDs), especially, communication and time challenges exacerbate these issues, making it difficult for patients to process the complex information they need to safely manage their own care once they leave the hospital. This lack of understanding increases the risk of delayed care-seeking, preventable complications, and unnecessary return visits to the ED (Dhaliwal and Dang). When patients do not adequately understand their discharge instructions, the transition of care to other providers is also compromised. Although digital health tools and patient portals can retrieve some medical information, providers often rely on patients to help navigate fragmented or incomplete records. A 2024 meta-analysis found that only 12% to 34% of discharge summaries were received by aftercare providers (Dhaliwal and Dang). The lack of discharge summaries during care transfers undermines providers’ ability to make informed decisions, increasing the risk of adverse health outcomes.
Patients with lower health literacy and non-English-speaking patients are most affected by discharge communication gaps, as they encounter significant barriers to understanding medical instructions and are left to interpret terminology without adequate support (Sheikh et al.).
Current studies estimate that 20% to 67% of patients do not comply with discharge orders (Clarke et al.). Compliance is directly associated with discharge comprehension (Clarke et al.). This means that when patients understand their medical instructions, they listen. Increasing comprehension, through our AI-powered discharge app, CareCompanian addresses key gaps in ED discharge procedures by providing more hands-on support to both patients and providers. Ultimately, CareCompanian will achieve safer, more effective care transitions during the transition out of the hospital.
CareCompanian is an app designed to ensure that every patient is able to leave the ED with clear, personalized support. Instead of relying on generic Google searches or just outright ignoring concerns, CareCompanian delivers discharge information into easily digestible language, visuals/symbols, and audio in the user’s preferred langauge. Through its key feature, patients can review a simple summary of their visit and track symptoms. In addition, CareCompanian integrates an AI assistant to allow patients to ask questions and clarify instructions after they leave the hospital. This novel feature finally provides an aveneue to bridge the gap between quick, complex provider explanations and patient understanding. When signs of extreme confusion or high-risk symptoms are detected by CareCompanian, the app escalates care by prompting immediate contact with a physician or emergency services. This escalation pipeline ensures that patients are not left to interpret dangerous symptoms on their own, reducing delays in care-seeking and preventing avoidable complications. In doing so, CareCompanian improves patient safety and confidence.
Benefits to implementing CareCompanian:
Provider:
- Saves time by reducing need for repeated explanations
- Reinforces discharge instructions without adding workload
- Decreases risk of miscommunication and liability
- Reduces unnecessary return visits to the ED, decreasing strain on the staff
Patient:
- Clear, easy-to-understand discharge instructions
- Multilingual support + audio/visual guidance
- Confidence in knowing when to seek care versus not
- Real-time symptom tracking with safety alerts
Hospital/Systems level:
- Fewer preventable complications
- Reduced ED overcrowding
- More efficient care transitions
When patients leave the hospital, they should feel empowered to understand their condition, follow their care plan, and recognize when to seek help again. Guessing what comes next is dangerous. CareCompanian ensures they never have to.
Costs:
For CareCompanion, we are looking at roughly $400,000 in total for app development, which includes software development, security testing, and HIPAA compliance analysis. Our initial fundraising goal of $60,000 dollars works to fund the primary phase of development. Through each donation, we are able to continue expanding our prototype establishment, prioritizing patient privacy while creating an accessible platform for patients.
Funding for this phase will support testing of core components, working towards a refined platform for patient accessibility. By supporting this stage in development, donors help patients better understand the clinical process, reduce readmissions, and prevent harm.
Sources:
Incentives:
The consequences are substantial: inadequate discharge communications do not simply impact the patient; the entire healthcare system feels the burden through unnecessary costs and consistent inefficiencies. By stopping just one readmission, Carecompanion can save upwards of $15,000 per patient. Hospitals are incentivized to reduce preventable readmissions by improving communication of discharge instructions.
CareCompanion lowers overall system expenses by reducing repeat patient visits, aided by improved patient understanding. The emergency department specifically will see drastic benefits. Overcrowding and congestion can be reduced through improved communication, allowing resources to be distributed more efficiently.
CareCompanion is both clinically valuable and economically impactful, providing a streamlined solution for unnecessary healthcare shortcomings.
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