Nearly 1-in-5 seniors who are hospitalized return to the hospital within 30 days.

One of the leading topics in healthcare today is reducing hospital readmission rates.  The National Institute of Health Care Reform’s 2011 report “Physician Visits After Hospital Discharge: Implications for Reducing Readmissions” found that the cost of hospital readmissions is $97 billion annually, $27 billion of which are Medicare expenditures according to Academy Health. Compounding the problem, discharged Medicare and Medicaid patients have higher bounce-back admission rates than those with other types of health insurance according to a study published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.