Commentary
Video
Dr Andrew Ho: After PE Hospitalization, It’s Important to Look Into Logistical Options for Patients
Author(s):
Andrew Ho, MD, talks about the importance of searching for what can be modified, such as closer transition to skilled nursing facilities, when working with patients who had pulmonary embolism (PE) and experienced readmission who had nonmodifiable factors and comorbidities.
Andrew Ho, MD, pulmonary critical care fellow at Temple University Hospital, presented a poster at the CHEST Annual Meeting 2023 where one of the main findings was that pulmonary embolism (PE) readmission rates are impacted by modifiable and nonmodifiable factors.
Transcript
What modifiable factors can be influenced for the better in this population, and what can be implemented to improve these factors for the best patient outcomes?
The main part of the project was looking at the nonmodifiable factors. All the comorbidities that these patients have, these are things that we can't really change. So, going forward, it's like, what can we really do to modify it?
As, we see these patients with higher scores coming back in more often, these are patients who are primed to have closer follow-up, like getting appointments before they leave the hospital, maybe closer transition to skilled nursing facilities or home health care. These are things that can be done for all these patients to ensure they do okay outside and get to all their follow-ups.
Something we hope to see in the future, is there are a lot of advanced therapies coming out for pulmonary embolism. They need to be shown to be safe and effective before use, but if these patients come back in [to the hospital] so often, have higher mortality, and have a lot of cost to the health care system, they might benefit from a more aggressive strategy. But this needs to be shown [with] more research.
