About twenty percent of demented nursing home patients keep going to the hospital for questionable reasons. The debate is whether these patients are going for real issues that CAN'T be dealt with in the facility or are they going because the nursing home gets a lot of money to take them back. Medicare pays about three times the normal daily rate for nursing homes to take patients back after a brief hospitalization. Truth be told, the study shows no causation so the researchers are postulating here. They forget the fact that many families want everything done for their relatives and many on-call doctors are covering for patients they don't know. It is tough to be a cowboy these days and manage issues without the risk of being sued. Still, with the amount of Medicare and Medicaid fraud in this country, this trend is concerning.
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