[Vinnie]

For example, in Medicare today, 18 percent of patients discharged from a hospital are readmitted within 30 days--at a cost of more than $15 billion in 2005. Most of these readmissions are unnecessary, but we don't reward hospitals and doctors for preventing them. By changing that, we'll save billions of dollars while improving the quality of care for patients.

dealt with this issue concerning my mother several yrs. ago.

She had broken her leg (90 y.o. at the time but very lucid and alert).
After the Medicare fixed number of days for that injury she was discharged.

She shouldn't have been as she needed more intensive recovery care but with Medicare it's..

Tough Tacos

I'll bet most of these re-admittance should never have been discharged in the first place.

[prairiebreeze]

As a nurse, I’d say you’ve nailed it. First off, the Medicare-aged crowd (65-100) is more medically unstable to begin with, due to age.

And for years and years discharge criteria as been too stringent within this age group, with re-admission being the result. I’m actually surprised that the number isn’t larger than 18%.

OtOH, I’ve seen hospital step-down units defraud Medicare by over-stating medical need in order to have their unit census remain high. This was several years ago though, and Medicare has since cracked way down on this sort of thing, which was needed.

Lastly, I’ll only note that not only have I not missed Kennedy’s input on this topic, I find the original author’s adulatory comments about Kennedy and his “respected voice” to be quite laughable.