Hospital Readmissions Following Surgery Are Not Tied to Errors in Care

A study from Northwestern Medicine and the American College of Surgeons published in JAMA suggests that penalizing hospitals for patient readmissions following surgery may be ineffective, and even counterproductive, for improving the quality of hospital care in America.

The authors of the study, titled “Underlying Reasons Associated with Hospital Readmission Following Surgery in the United States,” found that most surgical readmissions are not due to poor care coordination or mismanagement of known issues. Instead, readmissions were due to expected surgical complications, such as wound infections, that occurred after discharge and were not present during a patient’s hospital stay more than 97% of the time.

Read the press release: http://bit.ly/1vrPhvM

Read the study: http://bit.ly/1yyssqG