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Improving The Establishment Of The Goals Of Care With Patients - A Strategy To Reducing Hospital Readmissions In The US
[Full Text]
AUTHOR(S)
Adedolapo Ojo
KEYWORDS
EHR, Patients, Patient engagement, Hospital readmissions, Health savings, Physician communication, Goals of care.
ABSTRACT
Hospital readmissions have become a problem in the US and many reports have shown that majority of these admissions are avoidable. There can be huge national health cost savings if even just 10% of such readmissions are avoided, because of this the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is now penalizing hospitals for what they count as excessive admissions. The causes of these readmissions are multifaceted, and health institutions have different rates. One of the problems hospitals face that largely contributes to these high readmissions rates is poor establishment of goals of care with patients and this can be improved by increasing physician communication and patient engagement. Poor physician communication with patients and suboptimal patient engagement can be attributed to low physician/patient ratio, the Electronic Health Record (EHR) effect, language barriers, physicians’ poor communication techniques, literacy level of patients, physicians’ time spent doing administrative work, and so on. This article highlights interventions for these problems, some of which are communication skills training program, increasing the physician/patient ratio, physicians training to overcome the interpersonal distancing with which computer use is associated, ready availability of translators, and provision of language specific and literacy appropriate patient educational materials.
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