Study examines hospital stays and readmissions for hip-replacement patients

Bloomberg: Hip-Replacement Patients' Readmissions Rise With Shorter Stays, Study Says
Patients undergoing hip-replacement surgery are being released earlier, while more make return trips to the hospital within 30 days of the procedure, an analysis of Medicare recipients found. The number of days patients who had total hip replacements stayed in the hospital fell 60 percent as more people were sent to nursing and rehabilitation facilities than in the past, according to research published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Deaths from the surgery also fell or remained stable from 1991 to 2008 even as sicker patients underwent the hip operations (Ostrow, 4/19).

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This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.