Revolving Doors at Hospital

June 11, 2014

(New York Times) – Two days later she was back in the emergency room, wheezing and choking all over again, her readmission an embarrassment to the professional staff — and, for the hospital, a big fat fine from Medicare in a new effort to discourage these repeat performances. Cases like hers torture health policy makers, partly because nobody can quite figure out who is to blame. The system’s culpable habits are legion: discharging patients who are still sick, providing them with incomprehensible instructions, forgetting they’re too weak to get to the pharmacy, overlooking the booby traps at home, providing no coherent follow-up. Sometimes the outpatient doctor doesn’t even know the patient has been admitted.