Growing up, I used to get chastised a lot for rushing around—not that I apparently took it heart, as anyone who knows me can tell you now. But something my step-daddy always said to me stuck.
"Boy," he'd intone, his soft, gravely voice buried beneath the drawl of an Alabama coal miner's son, "don't you know it takes twice as long to do somethin' in half the time?"
It took me years to figure out, but when I see my own son rush around doing his own chores (and making a bigger mess), I often find myself wanting to say the same thing. Of course, my version would probably be more profane, less succinct, and not nearly as subtle.
Recommended For You
So how is it that it took us until now to figure out that rushing people into (and, more importantly, out of) the hospital might just cost us more money in the long run? According to an Associated Press story this week, more than a million of us check out—then check right back in—to the hospital, often with just a few weeks.
(The story's a breakdown of a Dartmouth Atlas Project, and Lake Research Group report published by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, by the way.)
We're talking about a revolving door system of health care that runs up a tab of more than $17 billion in health care bills in just Medicare.
According to AP, "Of seniors hospitalized for nonsurgical reasons, 15.9 percent were readmitted within a month in 2010, barely budging from 16.2 percent in 2008. Surgery readmissions aren't quite as frequent—12.4 percent in 2010, compared with 12.7 percent in 2008."
Finally, Medicare's begun taking the stick to these carrot-hungry hospitals based on number and frequency of patient readmissions. And it's making a difference. You're seeing doctors, nutritionists and administrators getting in on the act, and working toward providing more than a check-in service for patients, and offering a much more holistic approach. Which only makes sense; we've been asking consumers to accept more responsibility—along with the increased costs—so why shouldn't they get some help from providers themselves.
And, while we're at it, is there any reason employers can be more involved?
© 2025 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
