Question

Suggest how you would get to the root cause of the following problem:

A healthcare facility is experiencing too many readmissions through their Emergency Room.

Please provide atleast 2-3 paragraphs for this topic.

Thanks

Answer 1

Increase in the number of readmissions especially in large hospitals are of an increasing concern. Readmission means the patient who were treated earlier in the same hospital have to come to the hospital on emergency basis .

The probable causes of such readmissions are due to many factors . Firstly , the hospital fails to make proper assessment at the time of discharge due to the admission and in patient day policy for eg . a patient who undergoes laparoscopy treatment is supposes to be be discharged within particular number of days but do they all fall in the same category of discharge eligibility. So ,here it is assumed that the patient will get alright therefore the patient can come back with some complications if not assessed during admission.

Secondly, most of the time patients lie about their discomfort in order to reduce their stay and doctors might fall into a misjudgment and give discharge only to bring back the patient in a condition severe than before.

Thirdly, the patients might fail to strict routines which needs to be followed as a result they might again have complications.

Finally, the hospitals compete against each other to increase their admission rate and provide early discharges but they end up getting same patients with complications and might have to treat them with compensation.