Continuity of Care and Risk of Readmission: An Investigation into the Healthcare Journey of Heart Failure Patients

Claire Senot

Production and Operations Management, 2019, vol. 28, issue 8, 2008-2030

Abstract: We investigate the association between continuity of care mechanisms and a patient's risk of readmission in the context of one chronic condition, heart failure. We define continuity of care as the level of consistency across patient care episodes. We dynamically measure continuity of individual referring provider; continuity of physical location, which links multiple individual providers; and continuity of Accountable Care Organization, which spans a variety of individual and institutional providers. We compile a unique large‐scale dataset that includes patient‐level claims, to follow heart failure patients throughout inpatient and outpatient settings in 2014. Our final sample covers 44,129 episodes of care for 3263 patients. Using a competitive‐risks survival model, we find that all three continuity mechanisms are associated with a patient's lower risk of readmission. This exploratory study contributes to operations management literature by identifying effective integration mechanisms in the setting of healthcare delivery. In addition, by providing the first quantitative evidence for the critical role of multiple simultaneous mechanisms in ensuring continuity of care, this study offers important preliminary insights for public policy efforts.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/poms.13027

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:popmgt:v:28:y:2019:i:8:p:2008-2030

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://onlinelibrary ... 1111/(ISSN)1937-5956

Access Statistics for this article

Production and Operations Management is currently edited by Kalyan Singhal

More articles in Production and Operations Management from Production and Operations Management Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().