Researchers thought they had a way to keep hard-to-treat patients from constantly returning to the hospital and racking up big medical bills, the Associated Press reported. Health workers visited homes, went along to doctor appointments, made sure medicines were available and tackled social problems including homelessness, addiction and mental health issues. Readmissions seemed to drop. The program looked so promising that the federal government and the MacArthur Foundation gave big bucks to expand it beyond Camden, New Jersey, where it started. But a more robust study revealed that it was a stunning failure on its main goal: Readmission rates did decline, but by the same amount as for a comparison group of similar patients not in the costly program. “There’s [a] real concern that the response to this would be to just throw up our arms” and say nothing can be done to help these so-called frequent fliers of the medical system, said study leader Amy Finkelstein. Instead, researchers need to seek better solutions and test them as rigorously as new drugs, said Finkelstein, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the National Bureau of Economic Research. Just 5 percent of the U.S. population accounts for half of health care spending, and hospitalization is a big part. The study enrolled 800 hospitalized patients with at least two other admissions in the previous six months and at least two of these conditions: homelessness, drug use, a mental health problem, trouble accessing services, lack of social support or use of five or more medicines. Six months later, the readmission rate was 62 percent, and there was no difference in total health care spending.
