|
|
|
Shorter Hospital Stays Place Older Patients at Risk
|
Business New Haven
1/22/2001
By: BNH
|
NEW HAVEN - Permitting older patients hospitalized with pneumonia go home from the hospital too soon may not be a great idea. According to a study by a Yale researcher and collaborators, shorter hospital stays are likely to lead to patients being re-admitted or discharged to a nursing home.
“The length of stay is going down and doctors are concerned,” said Thomas Meehan, M.D., assistant clinical professor of internal medicine at the Yale School of Medicine and senior author of the study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. “Our findings raise a note of caution that we can't continue to decrease the length of stay and not have an eye as to the consequences.”
According to Yale, pneumonia among older patients is responsible for more than 600,000 hospitalizations nationally and $9 billion in health care costs every year. About ten percent of patients older than 65 who are hospitalized with pneumonia die while hospitalized, and many more die within a month of being discharged. Of those patients who do survive, about 12 percent require placement in a long-term care or rehabilitation facility.
Meehan and his co-researchers, who looked at patients over 65 who were discharged from Connecticut hospital between October 1991 and September 1997, found that mortality rates during the patients' hospital stays declined because they were there for a much briefer time period. At the same time, the percentage of patients transferred to long-term care facilities increased.
Meehan said he and his colleagues are now looking at the fact that hospitals can control costs for older patients with pneumonia, but what are the adverse outcomes? “What is the total cost to the health-care system when you factor in rates of re-admission and transfer to long term care facilities?” asked Meehan.
|
Go FirstGo PreviousGo
NextGo LastGo
to Index
|
|
