Nurses Key to Reducing Hospital Readmissions (852 hits)
All too often, patients discharged from the hospital return to the acute-care setting within 30 days, an indication that they may not have completely understood their post-hospital plan of care. New studies indicate nursing interventions can reduce the risk of a return to the hospital. “Readmission is a sign of a significant health-system problem, a symptom of lack of care integration,” said Anne-Marie Audet, M.D., MSc, vice president for health system quality and efficiency at the Commonwealth Fund in New York, which recently released a synthesis report, Reducing Hospital Readmissions: Lessons from Top-Performing Hospitals. “There’s a misstep or things get lost in the translation between one setting to another. A complication happens, and the patient gets readmitted.” A 2009 study from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago found that almost one-fifth of Medicare beneficiaries returned to the hospital within 30 days of discharge and 34 percent were readmitted within 90 days.
