Barton provides transition care for patients
By Cristina Janney, Telegraph
Over a period of 12 months in 2012 and 2013, Brooke Laine’s father, Ed, was hospitalized twice with pneumonia.
Each time he came home from Barton Memorial Hospital, Laine tried her best to help take care of her father, but both struggled. Brooke Laine worried about doing the right things and managing her father’s mediations. Ed Laine, who is 82, also was worried about getting his medications right.
After the second hospitalization, the Laines found help through a new program provided by the hospital called Transitions in Care. The program provides nurses to help with care and recovery in the home after a hospitalization. The goal is to reduce costly re-admissions to the hospital.
One of the primary goals of the nation’s new Affordable Care Act is to improve health care quality and use money more wisely. Hospital re-admissions are expensive and in many cases experts believe they are preventable with better primary care. Under the new payment system put in place by the new health law, re-admissions are one of the measures that will be tracked and tied to payments. Hospitals will face financial penalties for excessive re-admissions of Medicare patients with certain illnesses, including pneumonia, heart attack and heart failure.
Thank you Barton for working towards “Prevention”. My Christmas wish is for all agencies everywhere to put money, people, and efforts towards prevention strategies. In the long run, things would be more developed, less costly, and more effective.
On that note, lets up the reimbursement for primary care providers rather than providing specialists with $500K + a year incomes.