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Hospital Readmission Rates: A Case Study

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In this country, the healthcare system is struggling to incorporate a proper formula to insure an adequate transitions of care between different facilities. Due to these issues, hospitals and community practices are trying to develop better transitions of care systems to coordinate better care with their patients. Hospital readmission rates are becoming alarming, with almost 20% of discharged elderly patients returning to hospitals within a month for the same medical conditions (1). These readmission rates both hurt the hospitals, and more importantly, the patients involved; so, an effective system must be implemented that could ease this transition of care and help reduce readmission rates and healthcare expenses. The National Transitions …show more content…

These alarming statistics raise a huge concern with the effectiveness of the transitions of care. The main issue with transitions of care is that there are discrepancies that mistakenly occur during this process. As reported by Judith Kristeller, PharmD BCPS, “the transition between inpatient and community settings in particular is prone to medication errors related to a lack of communication between health care providers, missed patient follow-up, inadequate patient education, etc.” (6). Medicare services have even included a three percent fine on Medicare payment for hospitals that have unnecessary readmissions, and this percent has increased since 2014 (5). There are so many issues with patient safety that should not be occurring, so reforms must be made in transitions of …show more content…

By creating this comprehensive list of the medication plan given to the patient, the hospital pharmacist can then send this information to the community pharmacist and make sure that the information is held up to date. This would allow for a smoother transition for the patient and it would allow the patient to be more informed of their medications. The pharmacist is “poised to play an important role in improving medication management during transitions of care and reducing readmission rates” so the pharmacist should play a more active role to help ensure the best therapy for the patient (7). The pharmacist should ultimately design an ideal system for Medication Reconciliation to help reduce medication errors and better inform patients on ADEs to prevent any unnecessary medical

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