A Discharge Planner is a registered nurse or a master's degree holder in social work. They're typically in charge of coordinating the discharge of a patient. The discharge planner is responsible for coordinating a patient's release from a medical facility to their home or another facility like a rehabilitation center or nursing home.
The discharge planner's real work begins when a patient is admitted and continues throughout the patient's stay. They work with the hospital's utilization review office to take note of information like diagnosis, living arrangements, and social support system. This information helps to determine and develop a patient's discharge plan.
Discharge planners are mostly social workers or nurses. Federal law mandates that hospitals must have discharge planners. However, the state determines the educational and licensing requirements. An applicant can be hired as a discharge planner with a minimum of a bachelor's degree in nursing or social work.
How to Become a Discharge Planner
What is a Discharge Planner
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a Discharge Planner. For example, did you know that they make an average of $28.58 an hour? That's $59,454 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 12% and produce 371,500 job opportunities across the U.S.
What Does a Discharge Planner Do
There are certain skills that many Discharge Planners have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed Critical-thinking skills, Communication skills and Compassion.
How To Become a Discharge Planner
If you're interested in becoming a Discharge Planner, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 59.2% of Discharge Planners have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 20.9% of Discharge Planners have master's degrees. Even though most Discharge Planners have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a Discharge Planner. When we researched the most common majors for a Discharge Planner, we found that they most commonly earn Bachelor's Degree degrees or Master's Degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on Discharge Planner resumes include Associate Degree degrees or Diploma degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a Discharge Planner. In fact, many Discharge Planner jobs require experience in a role such as Case Manager. Meanwhile, many Discharge Planners also have previous career experience in roles such as Social Worker or Staff Nurse.
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Discharge Planner Career Paths
As you move along in your career, you may start taking on more responsibilities or notice that you've taken on a leadership role. Using our career map, a Discharge Planner can determine their career goals through the career progression. For example, they could start out with a role such as Social Worker, progress to a title such as Therapist and then eventually end up with the title Medical Case Manager.
Discharge Planner Jobs You Might Like
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Average Salary for a Discharge Planner
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Choose From 10+ Customizable Discharge Planner Resume templates
Zippia allows you to choose from different easy-to-use Discharge Planner templates, and provides you with expert advice. Using the templates, you can rest assured that the structure and format of your Discharge Planner resume is top notch. Choose a template with the colors, fonts & text sizes that are appropriate for your industry.
Discharge Planner Demographics
Discharge Planner Gender Distribution
After extensive research and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that:
- Among Discharge Planners, 86.4% of them are women, while 13.6% are men.
- The most common race/ethnicity among Discharge Planners is White, which makes up 70.0% of all Discharge Planners.
- The most common foreign language among Discharge Planners is Spanish at 67.3%.
Find the best Discharge Planner job for you
Discharge Planner Jobs You Might Like
- High Paying Discharge Planner Jobs - $92K and Up
- Entry Level Discharge Planner Jobs
- Part Time Discharge Planner Jobs
- Actively Hiring
- No Degree Discharge Planner Jobs
Top Colleges for Discharge Planners
1. University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
Ann Arbor, MI • Private
2. Columbia University in the City of New York
New York, NY • Private
3. California State University - Long Beach
Long Beach, CA • Private
4. SUNY at Binghamton
Vestal, NY • Private
5. Hunter College of the City University of New York
New York, NY • Private
6. University of Washington
Seattle, WA • Private
7. SUNY Stony Brook
Stony Brook, NY • Private
8. New York University
New York, NY • Private
9. Duke University
Durham, NC • Private
10. University of South Florida
Tampa, FL • Private
Find the best Discharge Planner job for you
Discharge Planner Jobs You Might Like
- High Paying Discharge Planner Jobs - $92K and Up
- Entry Level Discharge Planner Jobs
- Part Time Discharge Planner Jobs
- Actively Hiring
- No Degree Discharge Planner Jobs
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Top Skills For a Discharge Planner
The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 12.2% of Discharge Planners listed Health Care on their resume, but soft skills such as Critical-thinking skills and Communication skills are important as well.
How Do Discharge Planner Rate Their Jobs?
Discharge Planner Videos
