Computer-generated patient-tailored discharge document 137 the authors as a harbinger that personalized discharge information can be an effective solution to increase the quality of post-discharge care. Additionally, healthcare professionals (e.g. nurses involved in the discharge procedure) reported a decrease in time needed for preparing and providing discharge information while maintaining the quality of the delivered information and enhancing uniformity in discharge information. In contrast to previous literature which reported that patients often feel unprepared for hospital discharge due to a lack of information (5,6). This study demonstrated that the discharge information (before and after the implementation of patient-tailored information) satisfied patient expectations resulting in high evaluation scores. The necessity of personalization and preparation is also shown by Kang (13) and Rushton (14). Both these studies verified a lack of preparedness at discharge but also indicated an increase in preparedness when using personalized information. Naturally, one can question, aside from socially desirable responses on the part of the patients, whether the applied questionnaires (using a Likert scale from 1 to 10) were the best way to evaluate patient satisfaction and the comprehensibility of the provided discharge information. Moreover, the questions posed were elementary, unambiguous, and based on routine standard follow-up questions. Open-ended questions may have provided more detailed responses concerning information comprehension and could be considered in future studies. Additionally, the conventional discharge information also used some form of written procedural information, which increases patient preparedness (7,8). In contrast to previous reports, in which patient comprehension increased when using patient-tailored discharge information, this could not be replicated in the current pilot study (9,10). One of the reasons might be the difference in comprehension assessment between the studies. While Lin (9) used a telephonic follow-up where a physician scored patient understanding, Bench (10) used a peer-reviewed questionnaire with closed questions. Due to the allotted timeframe of our study, a telephonic follow-up was not possible. After e-mail contact with Bench, their questionnaires were reviewed for our needs but did not include the discharge sections we wanted to address, probably because of the difference in a clinical setting (ICU vs cardiac short stay). For this 8
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