¶ … Hospitals with more elderly, poor patients likely to face readmission penalties" by Katie Sullivan (January 8, 2014)
Are some hospitals discharging patients before they are ready, causing them to be subsequently readmitted? This would seem to be the issue involved in the recent decision by the federal government to assess penalties if hospitals treat so-called "dual-eligible seniors," or those eligible for medical care under both Medicare and Medicaid, because these patients are at higher risk of readmission within 30 days of discharge. According to an article by Sullivan (2014), the reality of the situation is that the majority of the hospitals that will be adversely affecting by this decision are those whose treatment area contains inordinately higher percentages of senior citizens who require a greater share of healthcare resources compared to their younger counterparts. Moreover, the quality of care being provided in these hospitals is not generally at issue. In this regard, Sullivan reports that, "Researchers found hospital quality wasn't generally to blame, but that the hospitals were in regions with fewer or lower quality primary care resources, increasing the likelihood of a patient getting readmitted within 30 days" (2014, para. 2).
Despite this lack of actual accountability, the...
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