An article in NPR writes of a study published in JAMA that studied more than 6 million hospitalizations from over 5,000 hospitals over a seven-year period, and found no evidence that the reduction in hospital readmissions resulted in greater risk of dying for patients recently discharged. In fact, hospitals that reduced readmissions the most were, if anything, more likely to reduce mortality after hospitalization. These findings held even for patients with heart failure, who had rising mortality over time as the least sick patients were increasingly treated as outpatients.
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