Cross-posted from HealthCare.gov.
If you or a loved one has ever had the unfortunate experience of having a chronic or serious illness, you’ve experienced the frustration of our fragmented health care system. Just when you are feeling your worst, there you are in the doctor’s office or hospital room, repeating the same information time and time again, sitting through the same medical test more than once, and trying to track down lost or unavailable medical charts. These are all aspects of our current health care system we could each do without.
This can be a particular problem for the more than half of Medicare beneficiaries with five or more chronic conditions such as diabetes, arthritis, and kidney disease. These patients often receive care from multiple physicians and in multiple sites. A failure to coordinate care can lead to patients not getting the care they need or receiving duplicative care. This lack of coordination also increases their risk of suffering medical errors, such as receiving prescriptions for medications that ought not to be taken together. It can also cause complications that lead to needless hospital stays. Nearly one in five Medicare patients discharged from the hospital is readmitted within 30 days – a readmission many patients could have avoided if their care outside of the hospital had been better coordinated.
Fonte: White House