CHI St. Vincent’s Hospital.

Executive Insight magazine reports on how CHI St. Vincent’s Hospital, in Hot Springs, Ark., cut readmissions nearly 90 percent mostly through closer attention to social determinants of health.

CHI St. Vincent adjusted protocols for pre-surgical patient contact and post-surgical follow-up.  It  implemented pre- and postsurgical follow-up calls within 24-hour, 48-hour, 10-day, 30-day, 90-day and 120-day windows and improved workflow through patient-centered monitoring of patients’ care  inside and outside the hospital. This let hospital staffers find such potential barriers to their recovery  as their transportation gaps, lack of social support or financial obstacles.

Thus CHI St. Vincent’s readmission rate  fell from 24 percent to under 4 percent.