Location and Medicare
A study that’s done every two years has concluded that Medicare is paying wildly different amounts depending on where in the United States you live. Some are four times as much as others.
They looked at ill seniors and disabled people and the care and length of hospital stays in their last two years of life. What they found was that doctors seemed to tailor the care they gave with the resources they had available. For example, if a city typically had few beds open, hospital stays where short and many would be treated as outpatients or in the doctors offices. Cities that had many beds open would have sick people staying a lot longer in that hospital.
This might seem logical and maybe not even worth a study. After all, if you don’t have beds for patients they can’t stay in the hospital. That seems to make sense. My question is why are people not staying in the hospitals for the amount of time they need to and no more? Why are people who are in need of hospital care being sent home, while those who could be treated at home are in the hospital?
I’m also wondering if these stats will be ever changing. What I mean is if you have an area where beds are tied up with lengthy stays won’t doctors start shortening those stays to free up beds? In time won’t there be many open beds because of shorter stays, which will in turn encourage doctors to keep patients longer and repeat the cycle?
Sounds like a game I don’t want to play.
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