Nearly one in six Medicare patients will wind up back in the hospital within a month after being discharged for a medical condition.  These unnecessary readmissions can have a huge impact on families, leading to more tests and treatments, more time away from their home and family and higher healthcare costs.

Readmissions hurt hospitals too. Beginning in fiscal year 2013, hospitals will be fined up to 1 percent of their total Medicare billings, and that penalty rises to 2 percent in 2014 and 3 percent in 2015. Hospitals have a lot of work to do until then. New data from the Dartmouth Atlas Project shows that readmission rates have increased nationally for some conditions over the past five years.

Hospitals need to find ways to effectively manage care transitions to reduce their readmissions.  This means redefining the point of care to include follow up care in addition to care at the bedside.  By understanding that care doesn’t stop when patients exit the hospital door, hospitals can build stronger relationships with patients and ensure that they don’t end up entering the same doors with an avoidable readmission. There are a few strategies that can enhance follow up care:

• Calling patients after their discharge to ensure that they are following their discharge instructions
• Connecting patients to health classes to manage and improve their health
• Connecting patients to a primary care physician

Beryl research shows that post-discharge calls help reduce 30-day readmissions and improve patient satisfaction.  This is even when these calls are outsourced to nurses who don’t work for the hospital.  Connecting with patients after discharge also supports overall Customer Relationship Management (CRM) goals by strengthening the patient relationship and facilitating the conversation to link patients to other appropriate resources.  Good follow-up care is not only the right thing to do when it comes to managing the patient experience, but it’s also the right way for hospitals to prepare for impending readmission penalties.