Excerpt
MARGARET WARNER (Newshour): Much of the attention surrounding the health care reform law focuses on questions of coverage and cost.
But the law also includes numerous provisions aimed at changing or improving the quality of care. Hospitals are already starting to deal with one of those changes, new penalties they could face if too many older patients have to be readmitted. And some are asking whether the levies are fair.
NewsHour health correspondent Betty Ann Bowser reports.
BETTY ANN BOWSER (Newshour): Seventy-year-old retired engineer Daniel Tollins has been in and out of the hospital so often, he's known in medical circles as a frequent flyer.
DANIEL TOLLINS, Senior Citizen: I have a number of medical issues, any one of which can kill me. But I'm living with all of them.
BETTY ANN BOWSER: Tollins has hypertension, diabetes, a liver condition, and cancer. So on this rainy Boston morning, he's on his way to keep an appointment he hopes will help keep him healthy.
The appointment is at the gym. It's just one part of an aggressive program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston to monitor frequent flyers like Tollins after they're discharged. Hospital readmissions are expensive. Nearly two million Medicare beneficiaries are readmitted within 30 days of discharge every year, costing Medicare $17.5 billion dollars in hospital bills.
Some health care reformers think hospitals could cut some of that spending if they were more aggressive in following up with seniors in the first 30 days after they go home.
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