Hospitals Try To Control Readmissions, Even When It Hurts Profits from Health.com

This story is part of a reporting partnership that includes WNYC, NPR and Kaiser Health News.

What doesn’t kill you only makes you a repeat customer.

So says Prescott Pharmaceuticals, fictional and macabre sponsor of The Colbert Report.

But it’s no joke to the health care system. Repeat customers in hospitals are seen as a big problem – not to the hospitals themselves, which can profit from some patients’ frequent visits, but to the entities that pay for the care: Medicare, Medicaid and private insurers.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, especially, is taking hospitals’ repeat customers very seriously. Almost one out of five Medicare patients discharged from a hospital is back within 30 days. Research suggests as many as 75 percent of those return visits could be prevented with better treatment in the hospital and better care once people are back home.

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