Wednesday, April 01, 2009

The Challenge of Readmissions

Today in the New York Times, we learned of the hopes of the politico in Washington DC to idealize the problem of readmissions to hospitals as a cost saving measure for Medicare and Medicaid. While this is a laudible goal, the challenges of readmissions to hospitals is not as simple as the pundits might suggest. Take for instance, these 9 patients who visited ER's 2,678 times between 2003 and 2008.

When we see data like this, I wonder how much government bureaucracy poured into hospital mandates will really address the underlying societal challenges we have before us.

-Wes

h/t: A faithful reader.

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