Phone: (516) 487-8207
The medical scene has exploded with hospitalists in recent years because they supposedly cut costs. However, a new study out of the Annals of Internal Medicine, released last week, claims the opposite to be true.
Hospitalists are specialists, who care for patients hospitalized for an extended period of time. Their purpose is to shorten patient stays in order to cut costs. Indeed, the new study looked at Medicare patients from 2001 to 2006 and concluded that hospitalists cut, on average, half a day per patient, resulting in $282 in savings.
But the study also found that in the post-discharge month, hospitalist patients were more expensive than patients cared for by primary care providers (PCPs), to the tune of $332 extra on average, thereby erasing the gains originally made by early discharge.
A blog posted by Dr. Kevin Pho argues that any system compartmentalizing medical care, such as the one separating patients between PCPs and hospitalists, is a system bound to increase costs because it creates communication gaps.
In this case, the fragmentation of PCP-hospitalist communication leads to early without enough follow-up after the discharge. This results in a high rate of hospital readmissions or relocation to nursing homes, rather than back home. Dr. Pho's post implies that greater communication with the PCP might avoid such results, but hospitalists are incentivized to discharge patients rather than send them through the hospital's system for an additional checkup. For their part, PCPs more readily accept patients for readmission if they are unsure how the patients were treated during their hospital stays. Finally, patients are all too willing receive a second opinion from a new PCP, just in case.
MORE INFORMATION
If you would like more information about how medical malpractice cases work in the state of New York, I encourage you to explore my educational medical malpractice website. If you have legal questions, I urge you to pick up the phone and call me at 516-487-8207 or by e-mail at lawmed10@yahoo.com to answer your questions. That's what I do every day. I welcome your call.
Read More About Hospitalist Care Increases Costs...
