1. Thank you for agreeing to participate in this experiment focusing on factors that are involved in the decision to discharge a patient from the hospital after complex surgery.
2. In this experiment you will make a series of choices between two options: "Discharge Patient" and "Do NOT Discharge Patient."
3. You will be able to make at most a total of 30 choices of the Discharge Patient option.
4. A choice of Discharge Patient is successful if the patient is not readmitted. A choice of Discharge Patient is unsuccessful if the patient is readmitted.
5. You will not be paid for unsuccessful discharges. For successful discharges, you will be paid an amount that decreases by $0.50 per day during a patient's length of stay.
6. Payments for successful discharges, shown in the right-most column of the below Figure 1, are updated each patient day.
7. The session will last no more than 2 hours.
8. You will be given a panel of three patient charts during any experimental day. Each patient chart will be accompanied by a brief clinical scenario regarding the surgery that the patient had and the patient's postoperative course up until that particular time.
9. In addition each patient chart will contain relevant clinical data regarding Inpatient Summary (Figure 2), Laboratory Values (Figure 3), Orders (Figure 4) and Vital Signs (Figure 5) for your review.
10. If you decide to discharge the patient from the hospital based on the clinical information you have reviewed, you will click the "Discharge Patient" button (see Figure 6). If you decide to keep the patient in the hospital for an additional experimental day, click the "Do NOT Discharge Patient" button; we will then provide you additional data for the next experimental day and again ask you to make a decision regarding whether or not to discharge the patient from the hospital.
11. Throughout the experiment, patients whom you have discharged may be readmitted to the hospital. The likelihood of readmission will be determined by the health status of the patient when discharged and historical experience with a sample of discharged patients with similar diagnoses at Emory University Hospital.
12. If a patient whom you have discharged is readmitted to the hospital, that patient will be added back to your panel as soon as the number of patients being served drops below three and you will not be able to make a decision about discharging that patient for three experimental days, during which your payment for successful discharge will have decreased by $1.50. During that time the readmitted patient displaces a new patient whom you could have served.
13. We are only interested in your decision to discharge or not to discharge the patient from the hospital. We want you to assume that the patient is being managed at the appropriate standard of care while in the hospital. We don't want you to speculate about tests and/or procedures that you might want to order.
14. When you are ready to consider a patient for discharge, click on the patient's ID in the version of Figure 1 that appears in the decision software screens.
15. Figures 2 - 5 will present information on the patient you have selected for review.

Figure 1: Patient Selection

Figure 2: Inpatient Summary

Figure 3: Laboratory Data

Figure 4: Orders

Figure 5: Vital Signs

Entering and Confirming Your Decision

1. The computer software in which you will see patient charts and make your decisions will present you with buttons you can click on with your mouse that look like this:

Figure 6: Discharge Decision

2. If you decide not to discharge the patient from the hospital then please click on the "Do NOT Discharge Patient" button. You will subsequently get new chart information on the health status of this patient to be evaluated for the next experimental day.

3. If you decide to discharge this patient then please click on the "Discharge Patient" button. You will subsequently get another patient to be evaluated for the next experimental day.