“Hospital, Corridor, Operating Room”, via Cezjaw on Pixabay

Hospital readmission reflects a general inadequacy in how patients with heart disease are treated in the U.S. healthcare system. Additionally nearly 20% of all patients are readmitted within 30 days of discharge reflects a necessity for change. This demonstrates that our healthcare system is primarily focused on treating problems rather than preventing them, which is staunchly inefficient when it comes to cardiovascular distress.

The dangers of repeated and elongated hospital stays- specifically accentuated in older populations- comes with cognitive decline, bacterial risk, and financial difficulty. Inpatient stays can be long, financially draining, and result in loss of sleep. There are so many unpleasantries associated with admission to begin with, consistent readmission only exacerbates those issues. However, that’s only what’s reflected on the patient’s side of things. What does readmission cost on the hospital’s end?

Inpatient care is by a longshot the most expensive type of care a hospital can provide, so it’s rather concerning that it’s also what so many patients undergo (especially if they don’t need to be admitted in the first place). Every day, $72.2 Million are lost to inpatient readmission, accounting for a $101.2 Billion loss

from overtreatment as a whole. 46% of healthcare treatment costs are for heart disease treatment, with heart disease staying at the leading cause of death in the United States.

Readmission for heart disease is sometimes caused by an unrelated disease caught when in the hospital, in most cases however- it is instead caused by recurring heart failure. 22% of heart failure patients later experience readmission, oftentimes caused by a faulty prognosis. Readmission rates for cardiovascular disease are further amplified within nonwhite, impoverished, and/or elder populations.

Every year, Americans experience around 1.5 million strokes and heart attacks- costing the U.S. healthcare system an annual $320 billion; in 2011 it was reported that readmission costs each American hospital $2.06 billion, and has since been on an upward trend. It’s easy to see that hospital readmission, a majority of which are due to diagnostic error and misjudgment on the part of the provider, presents a major financial burden in healthcare.

Here at ScriptChain Health, we estimate a 10% reduction of cost in heart disease management with our predictive AI software. Using our integrated SATs and federated learning model, our algorithm can maintain a 94% accuracy rate in predicting if someone will have heart disease long before it occurs. Artificial intelligence is beneficial in this space due to its lack of chances of human error; human cardiologists, on average, have an accuracy rate of 78%- making our algorithm 16% more accurate than its human alternatives. Combining AI with physician expertise can enable better patient outcomes and health equity amongst those most in need. Once predicted, our software can provide resources for preventing heart failure, heart attacks, and/or strokes altogether- this can be via increased accessibility to healthcare providers, easier distribution of prescriptions, as well as straight-forward graphs demonstrating a patient’s heart health. With ScriptChain Health in place, we estimate the saving of $69,405,352.71 by certain hospitals, streamlining connecting with specialists and stopping heart health decline in its tracks.

Citation:

Lawson, C, et al. “Trends in 30-Day Readmissions Following Hospitalization for Heart Failure by Sex, Socioeconomic Status and Ethnicity.” EClinicalMedicine, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 14 July 2021, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8283308/.

Hlatky, M, et al. “Diagnostic Accuracy of Cardiologists Compared with Probability Calculations Using Bayes’ Rule.” The American Journal of Cardiology, U.S. National Library of Medicine, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7081073/.

Stinson, Claire. “Heart Disease and Stroke Cost America Nearly $1 Billion a Day in Medical Costs, Lost Productivity.” CDC Foundation, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 29 Apr. 2015, https://www.cdcfoundation.org/pr/2015/heart-disease-and-stroke-cost-america-nearly-1-billion-day-medical- costs-lost-productivity.