Hospitals can slow the revolving door that shuttles heart failure patients back into bed within a month of going home by following up promptly to ensure patients get the right outpatient care, a study shows. The study involved more than 30,000 Medicare patients, ages 65 and older, at 252 hospitals that supply data to an American Heart Association quality-improvement program. It found that more than half of the hospitals in the study failed to follow up with patients for a week after their discharge, though most are elderly, frail, and taking a different mix of prescriptions or dosages.
