As many as 1 in 14 surgery patients have post-discharge complications, most commonly involving infection of the surgical site, according to a new study published in Archives of Surgery.
Julie A. Sosa, M.D., of Yale University, and authors used a database to review records for 551,510 patients who had undergone inpatient surgery at 250 hospitals across the United States from 2005 to 2010. They found that one-sixth of all post-op patients sustained a post-discharge complication.
The issue is timely because hospitals with higher-than-average readmission rates will next year begin to face Medicare reimbursement penalties under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).
The pressure in recent years has been to discharge patients quickly, notes ACSH s Dr. Gilbert Ross. Hospitals haven t been reimbursed by the day for many years now, but rather by the diagnosis, so they have pressure to get patients in and out. This has naturally but unfortunately led to too many early discharges, before patients who had surgery have had time to fully heal.
Dr. Bloom adds, People and institutions will respond to a new situation or law in the way that benefits them. So, if a bad policy is put into place there will always be unintended consequences as a result, which may be worse than whatever the policy was designed to address. Hopefully our health policymakers will have the wisdom and foresight to anticipate this, but I m not optimistic.