Anatomy of a hospital ‘bounce-back’ #preventreadmissions

Published at Fierce Healthcare on March 5, 2010

As a physician who works as a hospitalist and a primary-care doctor, I understand the complexity of discharging a patient from the hospital, and all the moving pieces that must come together to successfully transition a patient back to the outpatient setting. If even one link in the chain fails, a patient often ends up back in the emergency department and/or readmitted to the hospital as, in hospital-speak, a “bounce-back.”

These readmissions are like a canary in a coal mine, alerting us that our hospital-outpatient continuum is seriously disconnected and dysfunctional. And Medicare is now tracking readmissions for several diagnoses while threatening to withhold payment to hospitals for readmissions.

Read more at Fierce Healthcare by clicking here

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