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(Medical Xpress)—When hospital patients have to be readmitted soon after discharge, hospitals look bad. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-hospitals-unfairly-high-readmission.html Other Fri, 15 Feb 2013 14:00:01 EST news280158886 In a study that included data on nearly 3 million hospital admissions for Medicare beneficiaries with heart attack, pneumonia or heart failure, researchers failed to find evidence that a hospital's performance on the measure for 30-day mortality rates was strongly associated with performance on 30-day readmission rates, findings that may lessen concerns that hospitals with lower mortality rates will have higher readmission rates, according to a study appearing in the February 13 issue of JAMA. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-hospital-readmission-mortality-medicare-patients.html Health Tue, 12 Feb 2013 16:30:05 EST news279906494 In a national sample of 72 children's hospitals, 6.5 percent of hospitalized children experienced an unplanned readmission within 30 days, with significant variability in readmission rates across conditions and hospitals, according to a study appearing in the January 23/30 issue of JAMA. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-substantial-variation-readmission-children-hospitals.html Health Tue, 22 Jan 2013 16:00:08 EST news278091278 (HealthDay)—There were reductions in hospital stays for patients undergoing prostatectomy and cystectomy in 2004 to 2005, compared to those undergoing the procedures in 1992 to 1993, according to research published in the January issue of The Journal of Urology. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-hospital-shorter-prostatectomy-cystectomy.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Thu, 10 Jan 2013 14:10:01 EST news277044719 (Medical Xpress)—Medical centers that elect to keep psychiatric files private and separate from the rest of a person's medical record may be doing their patients a disservice, a Johns Hopkins study concludes. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-psychiatric-medical-patients-hospitalization.html Psychology & Psychiatry Wed, 02 Jan 2013 09:20:02 EST news276339753 (HealthDay)—Fears that patients are being forced out of hospitals dangerously early may be unfounded, researchers report. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-shorter-hospital-dont-compromise.html Health Mon, 17 Dec 2012 19:20:09 EST news274989704 Hospital administrative databases, designed to provide general information on hospital stays and associated costs, are frequently used to find information that can lead to quality assessments of care or clinical research. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) extracted data on hospital readmissions following spine surgery at their institution from an administrative database to assess the clinical relevance of the information and to define clinically relevant predictors of readmission. What they found were readmission numbers substantially larger than expected or appropriate. The researchers' findings are reported in the article "Pitfalls of calculating hospital readmission rates based on nonvalidated administrative data sets. Clinical article," by Beejal Y. Amin, M.D., and colleagues, published online today, ahead of print, in the Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-administrative-source-surgical-complications.html Surgery Tue, 27 Nov 2012 11:42:39 EST news273238921 When a cardiologist attends to heart failure patients, even when the severity of illness is higher, patients have reduced rates of hospital readmissions, compared with those patients who are treated by a hospitalist, according to a trial being presented today at the American Heart Association's scientific sessions in Los Angeles. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-hf-patients-cardiologist-hospitalist-readmissions.html Cardiology Tue, 06 Nov 2012 13:07:17 EST news271429454 Identifying risk factors in hospital readmissions could help improve patient care and hospital bottom lines, according to a study recently completed by Georgia State University's Experimental Economics Center and a team from the Emory University School of Medicine. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-factors-hospital-readmissions-surgery-patients.html Surgery Wed, 24 Oct 2012 12:18:05 EST news270299873 Three in 10 patients receiving a kidney transplant require readmission to the hospital within 30 days of discharge following surgery, according to a Johns Hopkins analysis of six years of national data. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-one-third-kidney-transplant-patients-readmitted.html Other Tue, 16 Oct 2012 04:13:51 EST news269579617 When hospital patients have to be readmitted soon after discharge, hospitals look bad. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-hospital-readmission.html Health Wed, 10 Oct 2012 15:44:55 EST news269102690 Hospital readmission rates and early death rates are used to rank hospital performance but there can be significant variation in their values, depending on how they are calculated, according to a new study in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-hospital-affected-methods-readmissions-early.html Health Tue, 09 Oct 2012 12:00:05 EST news269002524 Postoperative complications are the most significant independent risk factor leading to 30-day hospital readmissions among general surgery patients, according to a new exploratory study published in the September issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-08-surgeons-postoperative-complications-posing-strongest.html Surgery Tue, 28 Aug 2012 01:00:01 EST news265309052 Revenue-driven surgery and poor planning drive some surgical patients home too early, concludes a pair of logistical studies conducted by researchers at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-revenue-driven-surgery-patients-home-early.html Surgery Fri, 11 May 2012 11:56:35 EST news255956183 Differences in regional hospital readmission rates for heart failure are more closely tied to the availability of care and socioeconomics than to hospital performance or patients' degree of illness, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Quality of Care & Outcomes Research Scientific Sessions 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-hospital-readmission-linked-availability-socioeconomics.html Cardiology Fri, 11 May 2012 09:27:31 EST news255947246 The odds that someone undergoing spinal surgery at a particular hospital will have to be readmitted to the same hospital within 30 days is an important measure of the quality of care patients receive. That's because these "hospital readmission rates" often reflect problems like hospital-acquired infections or complications from surgery. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-spinal-surgeries-successful-statistics-ucsf.html Surgery Tue, 17 Apr 2012 16:30:01 EST news253889032 Patients' ratings of hospitals tally with objective measures of the hospital's performance, according to an independent study published today in Archives of Internal Medicine. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-patients-online-hospital-outcomes.html Health Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:00:13 EST news248370679 Patients treated for acute heart attacks in the United States are readmitted within 30 days more often than in other countries, a finding explained in part by significantly shorter initial hospitalizations, according to an international study led by researchers at Duke University Medical Center. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-short-hospitalizations-heart-readmissions.html Health Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:25:51 EST news244830341 High hospital readmission rates in different regions of the U.S. may have more to do with the overall high use of hospital services in those regions than with the severity of patients' particular conditions or problems in the quality of care during and after hospital discharges, according to a new study from researchers at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-12-hospital-admission-linked-high-readmission.html Health Wed, 14 Dec 2011 17:30:41 EST news243105947 (Medical Xpress) -- Nearly one-quarter of privately insured colon surgery patients are readmitted to the hospital within three months of discharge at a cost of roughly $9,000 per readmission, according to Johns Hopkins researchers, who’ve identified a major area for quality improvement and cost reduction in health care. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-hospital-readmissions-colon-surgery-common.html Other Thu, 17 Nov 2011 06:38:43 EST news240734315 A review and analysis of 26 validated hospital readmission risk prediction models finds that most, whether for hospital comparison or clinical purposes, have poor predictive ability, according to an article in the October 19 issue of JAMA. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-hospital-readmission-poorly.html Health Tue, 18 Oct 2011 16:23:28 EST news238173801 Researchers studying the first national quality measure for hospitalized children have found that no matter how strictly a health care institution followed the criteria, it had no actual impact on patient outcomes. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-key-quality-asthma.html Health Tue, 04 Oct 2011 17:21:37 EST news236967674 Avoidable readmissions after discharge from hospital are fairly uncommon and are not an accurate measure of quality of care, found a study in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-08-hospital-readmission-accurate-quality.html Health Mon, 22 Aug 2011 12:27:49 EST news233234853 More than 120 hospitals given top marks by patients for providing excellent care also have a darker distinction: high death rates for heart attack, heart failure or pneumonia, a USA Today analysis of new Medicare data has found. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-08-deaths-plague-hospitals.html Health Mon, 08 Aug 2011 13:50:02 EST news232027297 Emergency department patients who have recently been hospitalized are more than twice as likely to be admitted as those who have not recently been in the hospital, according to new research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania which will be presented this week at the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine's annual meeting. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-06-re-admission-emergency-rooms-climbing-patients.html Health Wed, 01 Jun 2011 13:10:54 EST news226152640 Surgical house staff and attending physicians who are reminded about the charges for ordering daily blood drawing for routine blood work appear to reduce the amount of routine blood tests ordered and the charges for these laboratory tests, according to a report in the May issue of Archives of Surgery. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-05-surgical-staff-phlebotomy-affect.html Other Mon, 16 May 2011 17:03:13 EST news224784180 Researchers compared hospitalization rates and rehospitalization rates of patients admitted for heart attack and for heart failure. Heart attack admissions are considered non-discretionary, whereas, heart failure admissions are considered more discretionary. Hospitalization after heart attack is mandated in treatment guidelines, so physicians have little or no room for discretionary decisions. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-05-doctors-decisions-hospital-admissions-affect.html Cardiology Fri, 13 May 2011 11:31:29 EST news224505071