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May 11th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda FRIDAY, May 11 (HealthDay News) —
Regions of the United States with lots of hospital beds and a large
population of lower-income patients tend to have higher hospital
readmission rates than regions with fewer beds and a more affluent,
healthier population, new research finds.
Factors related to supply and demand had more of an influence on
readmission rates than the severity of the illness or the quality of care
received by patients the first time they were admitted into the hospital,
the study showed.
High hospital readmission rates, in which a patient is discharged but
lands up back in the hospital soon after, is considered a key driver of
soaring medical costs, and there have been many efforts over the past
several years to try to keep people from returning to hospitals by
improving follow-up care after discharge, with home health nurses, primary
care doctors and other outpatient services.
Hospital readmission rates in the United States range from 10 percent
to 32 percent, according to the study.
Based on their findings, researchers argued that new Medicare
regulations that punish hospitals for high readmission rates may not
actually improve care.
“We have to find ways to help hospitals and communities address this
problem together, as opposed to putting the burden on hospitals alone,”
study author Dr. Karen Joynt, an instructor at Brigham and Women’s
Hospital, Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health,
said in a news release. “We need to think less about comparing hospitals
to each other in terms of their performance and more about looking at
improvement in hospitals and communities.”
Researchers examined billing records from more than 3,000 hospitals
across the United States from 2008 to 2009 involving more than 1 million
elderly Medicare patients with heart failure. Patients’ average age was
81. About 55 percent were female and 11 percent were black.
Communities with higher readmission rates were more likely to have a
greater number of physicians and hospital beds. These supply-side factors
accounted for 17 percent of the discrepancy in readmission rates.
The researchers also found the patients at these hospitals were likely
to be poor, black and relatively sicker. Poverty and minority racial
makeup accounted for 9 percent of the difference in readmission rates.
Meanwhile, hospital-performance quality accounted for 5 percent of the
difference in readmission rates, and the severity of patients’ illness
accounted for 4 percent.
The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services plans to reduce
payments to hospitals with higher-than-average 30-day readmission rates
related to heart failure, heart attack and pneumonia next year, according
to the authors. They argued this measure ignores the supply-side factors
and societal influences driving readmission rates.
“To really address the readmissions issue, we need to think about this
in terms of community and population health,” Joynt noted. “Focusing on
community-level factors — such as the supply and mix of physicians and
targeting efforts towards poor and minority communities — may be more
fruitful approaches to reducing readmissions. We need to think outside the
walls of the hospital.”
The study was expected to be presented Friday at the American Heart
Association’s Quality of Care and Outcomes Research meeting in Atlanta.
Because this study was presented at a medical meeting, the data and
conclusions should be viewed as preliminary until published in a
peer-reviewed journal.
More information
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services provides more
information on hospital readmissions.
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