Inpatient Liaison-Driven Approach May Reduce Hospital Readmissions

August 20, 2026 | 2 min. read

As more college graduates take gap years before medical school to strengthen their applications, Northwestern Medicine is using that time to meet practical clinical needs.

The Northwestern Medicine Pre-Med Gap Year Internship Program places pre-med students in clinical environments for 13 months to get hands-on experience, support research and participate in faculty-led lectures. Launched in 2022, the program has also given hospitals a flexible way to add reliable support in areas where local teams identify a need.

Addressing readmissions at Delnor

Like many hospitals nationwide, Delnor Hospital has focused on reducing 30-day, all-cause readmissions as part of broader quality and safety work.

One challenge is scheduling follow-up appointments, especially for moderate- to high-risk patients. Patients may be asked to schedule their follow-up visits soon after leaving the hospital, often while they are still weak and overwhelmed by managing new instructions. If appointments are delayed or never scheduled, continuity of care can suffer during this critical period.
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Brian R. Poustinchian, DO, medical director of Hospital Medicine at Delnor, and Jonathan Y. Song, MD, vice president and chief medical officer at Delnor, collaborated with the Care Coordination team to integrate gap-year interns into the discharge workflow to help ensure follow-up care was a priority.

• Epic’s predictive modeling was used to identify moderate- to high-risk patients.
• Gap-year interns met with these patients at the bedside to schedule their outpatient follow-up appointments before discharge.

“Reducing hospital readmissions has been one of our five core safety initiatives,” says Dr. Poustinchian. “Hospital discharge can be overwhelming for patients and families. To better support them through this transition, the gap-year intern meets patients at the bedside to schedule their follow-up visits before they leave. This removes a heavy burden during a tough time and works well: Data shows that 78% of patients attend appointments scheduled this way."

Gap-year interns and current medical students Andrew Song (OMS-II, Midwestern) and Rayhan Akthar (MS-I, Rosalind Franklin) found that compliance with follow-up appointments correlated with a greater than 50% reduction in readmissions among moderate- to high-risk cohorts. Previously, timely scheduling greatly impacted continuity of care due to high call-abandonment rates and an inability to secure appointments within the critical 14-day post-discharge window.
 
Unexpected benefit: LTR gains
Managing complex specialist scheduling for high-risk patients can require up to 40 minutes per patient. The extended face-to-face engagement with the interns doing this work at the bedside fostered a deep sense of patient appreciation, which was reflected in positive survey feedback and written comments.
 
“Ultimately, this individualized intervention model generated an unanticipated increase in Likelihood to Recommend Net Promoter Scores. In addition, given that readmission is publicly reported, improvement in this field will help strengthen our Effectiveness domain of our Inpatient Quality Composite,” says Dr. Song.
 
Future program plans
Each year, the program evolves to ensure gap-year interns work closely with case managers, nurses and physicians. The experience gives interns firsthand experience in clinical throughput, admission and discharge tracking — skills that will directly benefit their ongoing medical training. At the same time, it gives hospital teams additional support for work that can influence patient outcomes and satisfaction.
 
“The Gap-Year Internship Program is a wonderful example of the benefits of being part of an integrated academic healthcare system,” says Micah J. Eimer, MD, associate chief medical officer, Division of Cardiology and clinical lead for the gap-year program. “We identified an opportunity for the interns, but let the hospitals and local leadership decide where they could be most valuable. I am so grateful for all of the work done at Delnor by Drs. Poustinchian and Song to make this a true win-win situation. Based on this seminal work, we will be implementing a similar gap-year project to decrease readmissions across NM.”
 
Delnor is proud to announce Roland Asongakap, a future medical student, as its third consecutive gap-year intern.
 
Learn more about the Pre-Med Gap Year Internship Program.