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One in four hospitalized heart failure patients with Medicare back in hospital within a month

Study highlights:

• Roughly a quarter of Medicare patients hospitalized for heart failure are back in the hospital within 30 days.
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  The rehospitalization rate for these patients, who are over age 65, remained the same from 2004 though 2006

DALLAS, Nov. 10, 2009 – Almost a quarter of heart failure patients with Medicare are back in the hospital within a month after discharge, researchers report in Circulation: Heart Failure, a journal of the American Heart Association.

Each year, from 2004 through 2006, more than a half million Medicare recipients over age 65 went to the hospital for heart failure and were discharged alive. And each year, about 23 percent returned to the hospital within 30 days – signaling a need to improve care, researchers said. Readmission rates for all causes were almost identical all three years.

“I was hoping for improvement and was disappointed to find that was not the case,” said Joseph S. Ross, M.D., M.H.S., the study’s lead author and an assistant professor of geriatrics and palliative medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. “Despite the increased focus on the need to reduce readmissions, about a quarter of patients are back into the hospital within 30 days.”