Home Health Rejection and Your Grandma

It has been shown that 28% of people discharged from the hospital reject home health services.  Most of these are seniors and the do it because they just want to be left alone. “Refusing home health care after a hospitalization puts patients at risk of a difficult, incomplete or slower-than-anticipated recovery. Without these services, older adults’ odds of being readmitted to the hospital within 30 or 60 days double”.  You know what that means, right?  It means bad scores for the doctors and for the hospitals.   That’s the real travesty.   Forget patient independence.  Forget free will. We are talking Press Ganey scores here!  We are talking quality metric scores here!  We are talking less bonuses for the hospital CEO!  Something needs to be done to fix this.  I hear the term Soylent Green being whispered around at hospital meetings.  What does that mean?

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