Background: Hospital readmission rates may be influenced by the level of healthcare literacy. Patients who lack an understanding of their diagnosis and warning signs have the potential to not seek medical care in a timely manner. The information patients tend to receive upon discharge is lengthy and unclear. In addition, instructions are not standardized across [...]

Background: Socioeconomic status (SES) has been shown to have an association with patient health outcomes, including risk of hospital readmission. However, most SES data involve self-reported or aggregated information rather than objective individual measures. HOUSES provides an objective individual metric based upon real property data collected from county assessors that has been validated in other [...]

Background: International VTE management guidelines recommend outpatient management for appropriate patients with low-risk deep vein thrombosis (DVT) or pulmonary embolism (PE)[1-3]. Despite the evidence and recommendations, previous studies reported low prevalence of outpatient management, especially for PE[4, 5]. This analysis aimed to characterize trends in outpatient vs. inpatient management of VTE in the last 5 [...]

Background: Patients who are frequently admitted to Medicine inpatient services comprise a distinct subset of readmitted patients about whom not much is known. A prior study collected data on characteristics of 153 frequently hospitalized patients. This was a follow-up evaluation to determine the categories of patients the original cohort belonged to, and to collect mortality [...]

Background: Since the implementation of the Hospital Readmission Reduction Program, 30-day readmissions have decreased across the U.S. regardless of hospital teaching intensity. The effect of financial penalties on long term readmission rates has not been studied. Teaching hospitals serve as leaders in medical education, research, innovation, and patient care. Therefore, we examined whether long-term readmission [...]

Background: The knowledge regarding the association between increased blood pressure variability (BPV) and risk of subsequent clinical outcomes following acute ischemic stroke is not entirely clear. We constructed a cohort of patients hospitalized for new AIS to examine the effect of systolic BPV (SBPV) on the risk of dependency at discharge and 1 year readmission [...]

Background: Black seniors have historically had higher readmission rates than white seniors, and hospitals that treat more black seniors have been disproportionately penalized the Medicare Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP). Consequently, the policy could exacerbate racial disparities. We sought to determine whether, under the HRRP, trends in 30-day post-discharge mortality differed between black and white [...]

Background: In 2015, the United States had 25 million people with limited English proficiency (LEP). Most prior studies on disparities in outcomes in hospitalized patients with LEP compared to those with English proficiency were conducted outside the US and focused on outcomes such as hospital length of stay and mortality. There are also Emergency Department [...]

Background: Hospital Readmission Reduction Program(HRRP) implemented by CMS as part of Affordable Care Act (ACA) applies financial penalties to hospitals that have higher-than-expected readmission rates for common conditions such as AMI, pneumonia, and HF. CMS extended this program to include COPD for the fiscal year (FY) 2015. While there has been a reduction in readmissions, [...]

Background: Hospital readmissions are an important marker of healthcare quality, reflecting worse patient outcomes and resulting in millions of dollars of penalties annually. Medication nonadherence is an important driver of hospital readmissions, with one significant factor being difficulty obtaining medications after discharge. The difficulty could be due to copays, availability, or transportation to a local [...]