Episode 20: Using Data Science to Help Prevent Hospital Readmissions

Every year, millions of older Americans are readmitted to the hospital, costing Medicare (and tax payers) billions of dollars. And yet 76 percent of those hospital readmissions are avoidable. The key is knowing how to prevent them. In this episode, Jon Prial talks with Wes Little, the business line manager at Kinnser, a software company in the home healthcare space that is using its massive data set to help solve the problem. You'll hear about: -Why hospital readmissions are a problem and what’s being done about it (0:42) -How Kinnser helps in the home healthcare space(3:49) -The type of data Kinnser used to help solve the hospital readmission problem (5:15) -Maintaining patients’ healthcare data privacy (6:06) -What Kinnser’s data reveals about predictors of hospital readmission (7:06) -How clinical managers can benefit from these insights (12:14) -Results from early adopters of Kinnser’s RiskPoint product (16:17)