Hospitals Offer Wide Array Of Services To Keep Patients From Needing To Return

In the past, the only thing a patient was sure to get after a hospital stay was a bill. But as Medicare cracks down on high readmission rates, hospitals are dispatching nurses, transportation, culturally specific diet tips, free medications and even bathroom scales to patients deemed at risk of relapsing.

Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, N.J., has nurses visit high-risk patients at their home within two days of leaving the hospital. Teresa De Peralta, a nurse practitioner who runs the program, said they frequently find that patients don’t realize a drug they were prescribed in the hospital does the same thing as one they have already been taking.

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Source: Kaiser Health News (in collaboration with The New York Times)