Nursing Informatics · Clinical Perspectives · Healthcare Systems
"The United States alone [among wealthy countries] treats health care as a commodity to be
distributed according to the ability to pay rather than a social service to be distributed
according to medical need."
— JAMA (2003), 290, 798
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LACEd Up!
April 30, 2021 --
We are proud to announce a valuable addition to the widely-used LOINC clinical terminology standard.
This addition is the LACE scale.
It identifies patients who are at risk for readmission or death within thirty days of discharge.
This is of great import to hospitals in deciding whether and when it is safe and appropriate to discharge a patient.
Readmission or death of a patient within thirty days of discharge is considered an "adverse event"
and can result in a financial penalty to the hospital from Medicare as a provision of the Affordable Care Act.
For the sakes of both the hospital and the patient, premature discharges are to be avoided.