Clinical identification of patients readmitted to hospitals: why patients return.

Background: Increased interest in hospital outcomes has supported the need for clear and useful identification of patients who are readmitted. These patients have frequently been identified by the principal diagnosis of the initial admission.

Findings: In order to evaluate the effectiveness of identifying patients who were subsequently readmitted, those with two frequently encountered conditions, principal diagnoses of congestive heart failure and pneumonia, in the hospitals of Syracuse New York were evaluated.

Quantitative tools for addressing hospital readmissions.

Background: Increased interest in health care cost containment is focusing attention on reduction of hospital readmissions. Major payors have already developed financial penalties for providers that generate excess readmissions. This subject has benefitted from the development of resources such as the Potentially Preventable Readmissions software.

Healthcare cost containment and integration of care in the United States: implications at the local level.

As the urgency of healthcare cost containment in the United States increases, this study concerns the impact of this process at the community level in the metropolitan area of Syracuse, New York. It suggests that the responses of the Syracuse hospitals to cost containment have resulted in greater numbers of adult medicine patients. This development has been paralleled by a reduced integration of services with long-term care and ambulatory care providers.

Fifty ways to reduce length of stay: an inventory of how hospital staff would reduce the length of stay in their hospital.

Purpose And Setting: In this study we present a bottom up approach to developing interventions to shorten lengths of stay. Between 1999 and 2009 we applied the approach in 21 Dutch clinical wards in 12 hospitals. We present the complete inventory of all interventions.

Reducing potentially preventable complications at the multi hospital level.

Background: This study describes the continuation of a program to constrain health care costs by limiting inpatient hospital programs among the hospitals of Syracuse, New York. Through a community demonstration project, it identified components of individual hospital programs for reduction of complications and their impact on the frequency and rates of these outcomes.

Findings: This study involved the implementation of interventions by three hospitals using the Potentially Preventable Complications System developed by 3M™ Health Information Systems.