The following articles from the past month pertain to new findings regarding hospital readmission rates as well as articles about how to reduce readmissions.
1. The presence of hospitalist physicians at hospitals is associated with lower readmissions rates for three conditions tracked by CMS, according to an article published in The Journal of Hospital Medicine.
2. While an intervention to improve medication adherence in high-risk heart failure patients can be successful, improved medication adherence does not lower heart failure readmission rates, according to a Duke Medicine study presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions meeting.
3. UNC Health Care in Chapel Hill, N.C., has begun to use natural language processing technology to turn a growing amount of unstructured data into information that can help the system reduce readmissions.
4. Electronic health record-based prediction models may help identify patients who are at risk for readmission within 30 days of discharge, according to a study published in The Journal of Hospital Medicine.
5. Jasen W. Gundersen, MD, president of Knoxville, Tenn.-based TeamHealth Hospital Medicine; Paul Hildebrand, MD, associate director of the TeamHealth Patient Safety Organization; and Daniel Virnich, MD, CMO of TeamHealth Hospital Medicine, discussed strategies that hospitals can use to reduce inappropriate readmissions.
More Articles on Readmissions:
Lower Readmissions Tied to Higher Nurse Staffing
Study: Many Hospitals Don't Use Recommended Readmission Reduction Strategies
4 Staff Behaviors That Help Lower 30-Day Readmission Risk