Penn Nursing Science: A Leader for Change in U.S. Healthcare

July 29, 2009

Penn Nursing is making history -- with a new model of patient care (based on nurse-conducted research) that will impact the nation's healthcare and budget.

     listen to story [5 min 57 sec]

From National Public Radio:

Here's a number that tells you a lot about what's wrong with the American health care system: When older patients get discharged from a hospital, 1 out of 5 of them will go right back within a month. Medicare pays $17 billion a year on these hospital readmissions. And in many cases, coming back should have been avoidable.

Mary Naylor is trying to change that. She started the Transitional Care Model at the University of Pennsylvania Health System in Philadelphia. A nurse with advanced training in geriatrics is assigned to an elderly patient while he is in the hospital and then follows the patient, with frequent visits and contact, over two or three months to help him manage his own care.

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