The study suggests that hospitals should spend more time on inpatient to outpatient transitions and on population health. Specifically, it calls for a robust culture of health both within hospitals and in collaboration with the broader community to change this dynamic.
“If children from all of Hamilton County’s census tracts spent the same amount of time in the hospital as those from the most affluent tracts, roughly twenty-two child-years of hospitalization time would be prevented annually,” the authors wrote. “Disparities such as this can be reduced, in part, by a strengthened culture of health within a hospital or health care system whose goals are aligned with those of the community it supports.”
