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Get Out and Stay Out Part II

June 24, 2011

So I asked the smartest person I know—Mom—her thoughts on the best way to keep her from being readmitted to the hospital for her CHF. She said:

So I asked the smartest person I know—Mom—her thoughts on the best way to keep her from being readmitted to the hospital for her CHF. She said:

“First of all, they give you this discharge paper when you leave, which is very nice. But you can never read the scribbles and you have no idea what it means. So they could start by making it something you can understand. The other thing is that when you’re in the hospital, you have the idea (whether it’s true or not) that people are taking care of you, and talking to each other and things are under control. You at least THINK that someone is in charge. The minute you leave, that is over and you are on your own.”

This is extra hard on Mom because her huband of 50 years, npw passed, was a physician from the old school--from the days when your doctor knew everything. Now, Mom knows enough to make an appointment with her primary care doc as soon as she gets out. Unfortunately, the discharge summary is rarely available when she gets there. I don’t know how fast that will change, but there has been another interesting development: Her insurer, AARP, just called to get her set up on a monitor to check her weight daily (a common indicator in CHF.) I found that interesting—not the hospital, not her doctor, but her INSURER. AARP knows it will lose money if Mom goes back in.

What if the same thing applied to the hospital?

PS I am going to be submitting ideas for next month’s stories in a few days. If you have any ideas, let me know.