I remember the first time I saw a picture of a decubitus ulcer...also called a pressure ucler or bed sore. The picture was horrible! A huge hole in a patient's hip with black (dead) tissue surrounding it. Deep enough to put your fist into the wound!
There is no excuse for patients having pressure uclers. If they are provided with appropriate nutrition, hydration, and repositioned every 2 hours pressure ulcers almost never occur.
Now, McKnights, the nursing home industry's magazine recently published an article about the dramatic increase in decubitus uclers. Hospital admissions for which pressure ulcers were either a primary or secondary diagnosis rose 80% between 1993 and 2006. Pressure ulcer hospitalizations also typically lasted more than twice as long and cost between $6,000 and $10,000 more per visit than most other hospitalizations, according to the report. This is bad news indeed.
My Take: Nursing homes are doing a lousy job taking care of patients.
Monday, December 08, 2008
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1 comments:
The reason for this increase is simple. These patients are not being admitted from nursing homes to the hospital, they are being admitted from home.
Nursing homes are refusing to accept any patients with decubs. They are a liability risk. Further, patients with decubs are coming in from home because they can not afford to be placed in the nursing homes. As a result, home care can not keep them hydrated and moving and they get worse. The hospital can not keep them in indefefinately, so the patient is discharged from wence they came and the process repeats itself.
The good news, decub rates in nursing homes is decreasing. The problem is that the people who really need to be in nursing homes cant get in.
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