Stories about: hospital readmissions

Are pediatric patients being discharged before they’re ready?

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Parents' perceptions of their child's health are a good predictor of hospital readmission.Because unplanned hospital readmissions put patients at risk, burden families and add to the cost of health care, many medical professionals are taking steps to reduce them. To push the effort, new Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) rules impose escalating penalties that decrease a hospital’s Medicare payments if patients are readmitted within 30 days of discharge.

Last week on Vector, we reported research suggesting that some readmissions may be incorrectly classified as preventable (and thereby penalized), particularly at pediatric hospitals. But what steps can be taken to reduce the number of truly preventable readmissions?

One step, highlighted here last week, is making post-discharge communications much simpler with texts and emails. But how can hospitals make sure their patients are ready to go home? A new study published in the International Journal for Quality in Health Care finds that in pediatric settings, the answers may be found in parents’ perceptions, which turn out to be good predictors of an unplanned readmission. …

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A closer look at readmission rates for pediatric hospitals is needed

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One-size-fits-all metrics dont appear to fit children's hospitals.
One-size-fits-all metrics don't appear to fit children's hospitals.
Government agencies in charge of determining what constitutes efficient, quality health care have taken to looking at hospital readmission rates. On the surface, this makes perfect sense: If patients are continually being readmitted to a hospital, that hospital must not be doing enough to treat patients appropriately on the first go-round. But new research indicates that relying too heavily on readmissions as an efficiency metric may wrongly put some health care institutions—particularly pediatric hospitals—at a disadvantage.

At the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) meeting this week, a team led by James Gay, MD, medical director of Utilization and Case Management at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, presented research involving more than 1 million patients cared for at children’s hospitals across the country. The team, which also included Boston Children’s Mark Neuman, MD, MPH, posed this question: If hospital ratings are going to be tied so strongly to readmission rates, shouldn’t that rating system recognize the difference between potentially preventable readmissions (PPRs) and those that are unavoidable?

Currently, some state Medicaid programs use software such as 3M PPR, developed for this exact purpose. Like the basic idea that inspired it, the 3M PPR system works well on principle. However, according to Gay and colleagues, it doesn’t capture all the nuances of what makes a readmission preventable or not. …

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Keeping frequent flyers safe at home – with good detective work

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Photo: PhylB/Flickr

Jay Berry is a pediatrician and hospitalist within the Complex Care Service at Children’s Hospital Boston. He leads the multi-institutional Complex Care Quality Improvement Research Collaborative (CC-QIRC). This is the final post in a 3-part series.

Imagine a child and family going through four hospital readmissions in a row — one right after the other — and how disruptive those hospitalizations are to their lives. I recently was involved in a study that demonstrated that patients experiencing frequent, potentially avoidable readmissions – so-called “frequent flyers” — are a major driver of pediatric healthcare costs. These children often have very complex, chronic health conditions.  It’s now our duty to take action on these findings.

So how can we help prevent these repeated readmissions? …

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Gauging the impact of pediatric “frequent flyers”

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Jay Berry, MD, MPH, is a pediatrician and hospitalist in the Complex Care Service at Children’s Hospital Boston. He leads the multi-institutional Complex Care Quality Improvement Research Collaborative. This post is second of a three-part series.

Emerging evidence suggests that small groups of adult patients who are frequently readmitted to the hospital are responsible for a large proportion of health care costs. Is this also true in pediatrics? What impact do our young “frequent flyers” have on the inpatient health care system?

I’m fortunate to be part of a multi-state collaborative, supported by the Child Health Corporation of America, that is trying understand how to best deliver care to the neediest children. These patients have complex medical needs, who are fragile and predisposed to getting very, very sick. Often, they have multiple, chronic health conditions, neurodevelopmental/intellectual disabilities and impaired functional status, requiring feeding tubes, breathing tubes and other technology to maintain their health.

Many of them, like Jim, seem to be falling through the cracks. …

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My first “frequent flyer”

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Photo: Lars Plougmann/Flickr

Jay Berry, MD, MPH, is a pediatrician and hospitalist in the Complex Care Service at Children’s Hospital Boston. He leads the multi-institutional Complex Care Quality Improvement Research Collaborative (CC-QIRC). This post is first of a three-part series.

Everywhere you turn these days, there’s an airline, grocery store or coffee shop pushing a “frequent flyer” or “rewards” program. You know the gist – the more money you give these businesses, the more discounts they give back to you and the more money you “save.” In theory, these programs are win-win: customers like frequenting the same business; businesses love holding onto satisfied customers.

But when I was a medical student, and overheard a nurse call my patient a “frequent flyer,” I wondered, “Who gets the ‘reward’ in that frequent flyer deal?” I hoped this child, a 4-year-old boy with cerebral palsy, was benefiting from being admitted over and over again. …

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