Hospital readmission

The new medicare health care reform starting 2012, will require hospitals soon to eat the cost of a patient returning to the hospital less then 30 days from their dishcharge date. This opens a lot of possibilities to make an aggreement with your local hospital to help them save costs with return visits. For more information on readmissions see this articlehttp://health.newamerica.net/node/32174
In my practice I make house calls only and as a practice see patients within 7-10 days of hospital stay. I instruct patients and or caregivers to always let us know when they go in to the hospital and when they are discharged. We get the records and go verify the patient is recovering well. Many times the patient has the wrong medications and no idea what their follow up plan consists of.Joanne Gigi Hardtke, ARNP