Many Medicare patients readmitted to hospitals, study says
A study out today from The New England Journal of Medicine shows that 20% of Medicare patients are readmitted to the hospital at which they recently stayed within a month. That percentage jumps to 34 when looking at a three month time period. The data, representing Medicare claims collected between 2003 and 2004, show that more and more discharge is becoming a time at which it is crucial to have a good communication plan in place among caregivers and patients.
Hospitals may soon have a financial incentive to make patient care at discharge a priority. The Wall Street Journal Health Blog reports that part of President Obama’s Medicare budget plan involves not further reimbursing hospitals for patients who are readmitted for the same condition that they had at discharge. Of course, there are many factors to why patients are readmitted: being extremely sick, and perhaps having a primary care doctor who jumps to hospitalization rather than other treatment could lead to repeat visits. A stronger continuum of care that involves better communication on the part of all of a patient’s doctors would also help lower these rates. Also, involving the patient and his or her family (and evaluating if they are health literate) in the discharge process would help lower readmission rates, researchers say.
About the Author: Heather Comak is a Managing Editor at HCPro, Inc., where she is the editor of the monthly publication Briefings on Patient Safety, as well as patient safety-related books and audio conferences. She is also is the Assistant Director of the Association for Healthcare Accreditation Professionals.
Contact Heather by e-mailing hcomak@hcpro.com
