Heart Failure 30 Day Re-Admission Rates, Article Critique Example

The paper aims to take an analysis on Medicaid and Medicare system in the United States. The first section of the paper introduces the objectives of the two companies to patients, which happen to be better health for the individual, better health for the population as well as reduced per capita costs. At the end of the day, as much as everyone hates to admit it medical insurance is still a business and as such must make a profit for it to go forward. The article describes the methodology for readmission for patients as well as statistics on the readmission rates for patients (Edgman?Levitan, 2011).

There are three methods of research design associated here which are descriptive exploratory and co relational (Current Nursing, 2011). This is a good way of knowing what to emphasize on as exploratory research studies do not give the clear picture of the larger population, but give a better understanding of the sample (Burns and Grove, 1999). There are main conditions patients suffer from that are associated with the increased 30 day readmission rates that have been cropping up in the recent period. The reasons are divided into two which are medical and surgical. The former include pneumonia and heart failure while the surgical are mainly associated with vascular and cardiac surgery.

This does not mean there are not circumstances when readmissions should be avoided. In fact, there are intervention methods just for such situations. This include project RED and BOOST for the purpose of evaluation and analysis of intervention methods best suitable for these cases. For example, this article shows a propensity for research designs such as BOOST giving results in favor of reduction of these readmission rates.

References

Burns, N. & Grove, S. K. (1999) Nursing Research; Research; Philosophy; methods retrieved from http://uir.unisa.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10500/2127/04chapter3.pdf

Edgman?Levitan, S. (2011). Reducing 30-day Readmission Rates. The John D. Stoeckle Center for Primary Care Innovation, Massachusetts General Hospital. Print.

Current nursing. (2011). Nursing Research and Theories retrieved from http://currentnursing.com/nursing_theory/research_and_nursing_theories.html