Medicare beneficiaries most likely to be readmitted

Using a retrospective analysis of Medicare data sets, researchers identified both hospital and patient variables contributing to hospital readmissions rates. The authors found that patients in the sample who presented with 10 or more chronic conditions were more than 6 times as likely to be readmitted than those with fewer chronic comorbidities. While these individuals comprise less than 9% of all Medicare beneficiaries, in these data they were found to account for 50% of identified readmissions.