"After a hospital stay, many patients are still recovering and often facing new illnesses. As they heal, they must struggle to cope with and understand new symptoms and new medications, and often face an array of doctor office visits. Some doctors call this the post-hospital syndrome. Before the ACA, nearly a fifth of all Medicare patients were readmitted to the hospital within 30 days of leaving it, at a cost of $15 billion per year. Some — perhaps many — of these readmissions are preventable.
Helping patients avoid problems that send them back to the hospital can improve their quality of life while also reducing costs. Before the ACA, though, there were no real incentives to help patients avoid a return to the hospital...
We often don’t have rigorous evidence to support what policies work best to improve quality of life, quality of care, and value for patients covered by Medicare. Based on research we and other colleagues published in today’s Annals of Internal Medicine, we believe that penalties for high readmission rates are working."
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