How Education Impacts Patient Care and Reduces Hospital Costs

April 29, 2010: 8:17 AM ET From CNNMoney‘s Parija Kavilanz, senior writer, the new health law puts the nation’s hospitals on strict notice. Either they improve the safety and quality of care for patients or the government will hit them where it hurts the most — their revenue

The legislation contains dozens of provisions, including fining hospitals, to reduce medical errors, hospital-borne infections and costly preventable readmissions.  The article goes into more detail on each item but preventable readmissions has some actionable things hospitals can do.

From the article: Preventable readmissions: These cost the health care system about $25 billion every year, according to consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.

To tackle the problem, beginning in 2012, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will publish each hospital’s readmission track record.

Experts say high readmission rates — when patients return within 30 days of discharge — indicate hospitals aren’t adequately addressing patient issues or they’re discharging them prematurely.

Patient issues can be interpreted as adequate patient education in many cases. From research and reported in Arch Internal MED/VOL 160 “Between 12-75% of all readmissions can be prevented by proper patient education, especially dealing with discharge instructions on self care.” This represents a savings between $3B and $18.7B in just this area alone.

Most patients are very anxious to leave the hospital and really don’t pay attention to their discharge instructions very well. Add also the complex language associated with medical instructions and the fact that many patients just don’t understand what they are being told and thus don’t follow orders properly it’s no wonder this is a huge problem.

But what’s a hospital to do? One answer is to address the problem head-on. Patient education is not adequate if the process is a brief conversation with the patient and a typed or written handout. While the nurse may feel they’ve done their job, the patient has not been educated. To truly address the problem, hospitals should:

• Place specific emphasis on patient education and create a patient education process.
• Include audio and video educational materials in multiple languages because not all patients learn the same.
• Supplement written documents with those that include pictures and diagrams for patients with language issues.
• Make sure nurses are trained in the process and understand that the best time to begin educating a patient is every time they encounter the patient, not just at discharge.

According to Fran London, MS, RN and author of No Time to Teach, “If the educator wants to be most effective, it is important to know the evidence, and apply it to practice.  Research shows that the process that works best is to assess the learner, involve the learner in the process, individualize teaching, and evaluate understanding through teach-back and return demonstration.

When the educator leaves out one or more of these steps, teaching becomes less effective and less efficient.  For

Patient Ed Reduces Hospital Costs: Free Download

example, if teaching is standardized rather than individualized, the educator may teach everyone from the same booklet.  This would not work if the patient is blind, reads a language different from that of the booklet, or has low literacy skills.  Assessment tells you how to individualize teaching.”

Regarding patient education and readmissions, author and patient educator, Ms. London notes,  “Improved health outcomes are dependent upon patients following through on treatments and follow-up after discharge. Patients following through on treatments and follow-up after discharge can eliminate preventable costly re-hospitalizations.”

She also reinforces the relationship between education and a financially healthy hospital this way, “Hospital report cards will reveal the quality of patient education through better patient satisfaction and outcomes.  Focusing on patient education might not only save you money, it may make you money.”