Grand-Aides And Health Policy: Reducing Readmissions Cost-Effectively

Hospital readmissions for the same condition within 30 days likely should not occur, and most often indicate system failure. Readmitted patients are either discharged too early, should be placed into palliative care or hospice, or most often are victims of a failure in transition of care from hospital to home. Most hospitals and physicians would like to eliminate such readmissions, particularly now that payers like Medicare are penalizing hospitals for high rates of readmission. Numerous approaches have been tried to reduce readmissions, with recent published improvements between a 2 percent and 26 percent reduction. The Grand-Aides® program features rigorous training of nurse aides or community health workers to work as nurse extenders, 5 Grand-Aides to one RN or nurse practitioner (NP) supervisor, with approximately 50 patients per Grand-Aide per year. The Grand-Aides visit at home daily for the first 5 days post-discharge and then as ordered by the supervisor (e.g. 3 days the next week) for at least 30 days, extending as long as desired. The post-discharge protocol for Grand-Aides includes the following: Reinforce all elements of the discharge plan (e.g. 6 methods for medication adherence). Do medication reconciliation with the supervisor via live HIPAA-compliant video. Administer symptom questionnaires customized by the supervisor for each patient, sent electronically to the supervisor, who then has a video call with the patient on each Grand-Aide visit. Grand-Aides do ...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Access All Categories Health Care Costs Health Care Delivery Hospitals Payment Quality Workforce Source Type: blogs