Researcher: Socioeconomics not to blame for readmission rates

Socioeconomic factors may not contribute to readmissions after all, according to a Yale researcher. Harlan Krumholz, professor of medicine at the Yale School of Medicine, disputed Kaiser Health News' report last month that hospitals with poor patients are nearly three times as likely to face readmissions. 

Krumholz said that while his research supported the idea that hospitals with poorer patients have slightly higher readmission rates, it differed from Kaiser Health's analysis on the cause of the disparity, the Yale Daily News reported this week. Krumholz's study found that hospitals with many poor patients had similar readmission rates as did hospitals with fewer such patients. Because of that, the study concluded that hospitals with a higher share of lower-income patients can perform at least as well on readmission measures, and that the main factor in readmissions has to do with the medical approach of certain hospitals. Article

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