Medical care
-
Health systems may play an important role in identification of patients at-risk of opioid medication overdose. However, standard measures for identifying overdose risk in administrative data do not exist. ⋯ Claims-based measures can be used by health systems to identify individuals at-risk of overdose who can be targeted for restrictions on opioid prescribing, dispensing, or referral to treatment.
-
US hospitals that care for vulnerable populations, "safety-net hospitals" (SNHs), are more likely to incur penalties under the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program, which penalizes hospitals with higher-than-expected readmissions. Understanding whether SNHs face unique barriers to reducing readmissions or whether they underuse readmission-prevention strategies is important. ⋯ Despite reporting more barriers to reducing readmissions, SNHs were less likely to use readmission-reduction strategies. This combination of higher barriers and lower use of strategies may explain why SNHs have higher rates of readmissions and penalties under the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program.
-
Identifying patients at high risk for readmission early during hospitalization may aid efforts in reducing readmissions. We sought to develop an early readmission risk predictive model using automated clinical data available at hospital admission. ⋯ Automated clinical data can generate a readmission risk score early at hospitalization with fair discrimination. It may have applied value to aid early care transition. Adding administrative data increases predictive accuracy. The administrative data-enhanced model may be used for hospital comparison and outcome research.