Readmission to emergency facilities is a frequent and costly problem. Recent studies have demonstrated that 20% of Medicare beneficiaries are readmitted within 30 days. Approximately one-quarter of all patients discharged from a hospitalization for heart failure are readmitted within 30 days. Thus, contributions on understanding the interactions between health care provider and health care demands, as well as the incentives of the agents to invest on Etele-health technology and E-medication manager into the health care system have high potential for reducing readmission rate.
We used a system simulation and analysis methodology to identify the key factors in the after-discharging systems which may contribute to high readmission rate, and hence to improve system performance and reduce readmission rate with lower cost.