hospital readmissions

Just Listen: Teaching Doctors to Pay Attention

Posted on 04/29/2013 by | Personal Health and Well-being | Comments

Bulletin Today | Personal Health“There is a bias in medicine against talking to people,” a frustrated health care provider tells the Washington Post. Or, as a recent story in the Wall Street Journal put it, “Doctors are rude. Doctors don’t listen. Doctors have no time. Doctors don’t explain things in terms patients can understand.” And then there’s the poignant explanation that a 78-year-old Medicare patient tells the Post: “In a doctor’s office, a lot of people, especially older people, feel pressure to get out …

Leaving Hospital? Heed Care Tips or You May Be Back

Posted on 02/14/2013 by | General News | Comments

Bulletin Today | Personal HealthBy Lauran Neergaard, Medical Writer, The Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Michael Lee knew he was still in bad shape when he left the hospital five days after emergency heart surgery. But he was so eager to escape the constant prodding and the roommate’s loud TV that he tuned out the nurses’ care instructions. “I was really tired of Jerry Springer,” the New York man says ruefully. “I was so anxious to get out that it sort of overrode everything …

Can Medicare Slow the Hospital Revolving Door?

Posted on 02/11/2013 by | General News | Comments

Bulletin Today | Personal HealthBy Lauran Neergaard, Medical Writer, The Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — More than 1 million Americans wind up back in the hospital only weeks after they left for reasons that could have been prevented — a revolving door that for years has seemed impossible to slow. Now Medicare has begun punishing hospitals with hefty fines if they have too many readmissions, and a top official says signs of improvement are beginning to emerge. “We’re at a very promising moment,” Medicare …

A New Way to Bring Down Health Costs?

Posted on 01/23/2013 by | Health | Comments

Bulletin TodayBy Ankita Rao of Kaiser Health News A pilot program introduced by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to boost quality of care for older Americans by developing community-wide approaches to health problems could play a key role in bringing down costs, according to a new report in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Quality Improvement Organizations, or QIOs, are private groups in each state and U.S. territory that contract with the government for three years to …