Post-hospital syndrome can develop when a hospital patient is weak from lack of exercise, malnutrition, or sleep deprivation, according to Harlan Krumholz, the study's author and a Yale School of Medicine professor and cardiologist.
For the study, Krumholz analyzed Medicare data from 2003 to 2004 on nearly 12 million beneficiaries. He found that the majority of readmitted patients were being treated for a completely different ailment than the one that originally landed them in the hospital. For example, a patient admitted with pneumonia may be readmitted two weeks after discharge with a broken bone from a fall.
The first 30 days after discharge "are a transient period when the patient is at great risk and is susceptible to many things," Krumholz told NBC News' "Vitals."
He suggests that "maybe we haven't adequately recognized the potential toxicities that can occur during the course of a hospital stay." When a hospital focuses on healing a patient, "everything else is pushed to the side," Krumholz says. "Sleep doesn't matter when we're dealing with your pneumonia," he notes.
Krumholz recommends counseling: Hospitals should warn patients that they may be "a little foggy" for a few weeks, at the very least. In addition, Krumholz says hospitals could make a greater effort to respect patients' sleeping schedules and get them out of bed to exercise.
One health expert—Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine professor Mark Williams—says that Krumholz's study may not be an accurate snapshot of the problem because the patients studied tended to be older with more chronic conditions. These patients need more "physical therapy and occupational therapy," he says.
Nonetheless, Krumholz says the findings have wide applications. "[T]his problem affects everyone who is hospitalized to a variable extent," he says (Carroll, "Vitals," NBC News, 1/14).
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