Hospital re-admission rates were studied by Henry Ford Hospital researchers on patients with congestive heart failure. What they found was a bit surprising because it wasn't the severity of their congestive heart failure that determined re-admissions. They reported that a history of psychiatric problems such as depression, anxiety and other mood disorders and impairments in a patient's ability to think, remember, and reason were the strongest predictors.
Of course, this means that doctors must know more than about their congestive heart failure. They needed to know the person with the disease and about their whole life story as well as how that interfaced with their living situation and their values. We simply don't take time for this in today's failing health care paradigm.
This was published in the September 2013 issue of the journal, Psychosomatics.
