
Mastery in Diabetes Management: HbA1c's Role in Diabetes Readmission
Mastery in Diabetes Management: HbA1c's Role in Diabetes Readmission
Hirva Bakeri, MD, MS, on how HbA1c levels were not predictive of 30-day hospital readmissions
Patients with a primary diagnosis of diabetes were found to have significantly higher HbA1c levels than those with a secondary diagnosis of diabetes.
Note that patients with multiple readmissions within 30 days had a higher HbA1c when compared to those with one readmission.
Hirva Bakeri, MD, MS, of the University of Connecticut, spoke with MedPage Today at ENDO 2017, the annual meeting of The Endocrine Society in April, when she presented a poster on how mean HbA1c was higher among patients with multiple readmissions compared to those with only 1-readmission, despite HbA1c levels not being significantly associated with overall readmission. Her full poster may be downloaded by clicking here .
Following is a transcript of her remarks:
The research that we did was about the role of hemoglobin A1c on readmission rates for patients with diabetes. To give you a little bit of background, hospital readmission is a high-priority healthcare quality measure and a target for cost reduction. In this current era of major healthcare reform, this is of growing importance.
In 2012, in the month of October, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services came up with a program called Hospital Readmission Reduction program that decreases payments for hospitals if they have higher-than-expected numbers of readmissions. And when I say readmissions, I'm usually talking about early readmissions of patients who were discharged wi
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