Heart failure patients who follow up with a physician in the first month following hospital discharge have a lower mortality and urgent readmission risk than patients who do not have early physician follow-up, even if the follow-up physician is unfamiliar to the patient, according to a study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
From January 1999 to June 2009, 21.9 percent of adult heart failure patients did not have a follow-up visit with a physician in the first month following a hospital discharge, 69.2 percent followed up with a familiar physician and 9 percent followed up with an unfamiliar physician. The authors defined a familiar physician as one who had seen the patient at least twice in the year before the heart failure admission or once during admission.
Patients who had early follow-up with a physician had a lower six-month mortality and readmission risk than patients with no follow up, regardless of physician familiarity.
When accounting for all follow-up visits within six months post-discharge, however, patients who visited only a familiar physician had a lower mortality and readmission risk than patients who visited only an unfamiliar physician.
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