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Study Says Lower-Cost Hospital Care Is Not Always Lower in Quality
"Hospitals face increasing pressure to lower cost of care while improving quality of care," the authors write as background information in the article. However, critics have expressed concerns about the trade-off between the two goals. "In particular, might hospitals with lower cost of care and lower expenditures devote less effort to improving quality of care? Might the pursuit of lower cost of care drive hospitals to be âpenny wise and pound foolish,'' discharging patients sooner, only to increase re-admission rates and incur greater inpatient use over time?"
Lena M. Chen, M.D., M.S., of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and colleagues conducted a national study of hospitals that discharged Medicare patients who were hospitalized for congestive heart failure or pneumonia in 2006. For each condition, the researchers used data from national databases to examine the association between hospital cost of care and several variables: 30-day death rates, readmission rates, six-month inpatient cost of care and a quality score based on several performance indicators for each condition.
Costs of care for each condition varied widely. Care for a typical patient with congestive heart failure averaged $7,114 and could range from $1,522 to $18,927, depending on which of the 3,146 hospitals discharged the patient. Cost of care for a typical patient with pneumonia averaged $7,040 and varied from $1,897 to $15,829 per hospitalization among 3,152 facilities.
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