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Readmission More Likely for Non-surgical Patients
Cheryl Clark, for HealthLeaders Media, March 9, 2012
Patients undergoing non-surgical care for chronic or acute conditions were back in the hospital significantly more often than patients initially hospitalized for surgical procedures, a study 30-day readmission rates in 15 large states has revealed.
click to view table |
That's according to the latest statistical brief from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP), which looked at 8.7 million discharges for all payers and all ages.
"Developing multi-state benchmarks for hospital readmission rates can help to identify opportunities for targeted improvement efforts," the brief said.
For example, 22.7% of patients undergoing non-surgical hospitalizations for chronic conditions, and 18% of those undergoing non-surgical hospitalization for acute conditions, were back in the hospital within 30 days.
But for patients hospitalized for surgery, the readmission rates were lower, 12.6% and 12.5% respectively. The study is especially significant because these 15 states where the hospital discharge information came from represent 42% of the U.S. population.
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Comments are moderated. Please be patient.
Ramona Frazier (3/23/2012 at 11:09 AM)
I'm not exactly sure what they were trying to accomplish with this study, but it doesn't take special studies to know that a patient with a chronic condition is more likely to be readmitted. An acute condition for the most part is curable and a chronic condition is not.