Every hospital has them.  Frequent fliers. These are the patients with chronic disease (not the one's looking for pain medication) who are admitted once, twice, or more often a year.  They come in, get a tune up and go back home until the next tune up. The patients I'm referring to are not ER frequent fliers (although they can be a problem too), but folks who come and stay a few days. Some hospitals create special frequent flier services to shorten their stay. These admissions are potentially avoidable, and avoidable admissions represent over 10 percent of hospital admissions.

Here is a story of a new effort to improve chronic disease management and avoid those frequent flyer admissions. While the “wireless body vest” from Medify sounds a bit Buck Rogers, remote disease management along with some monitoring (or self monitoring) technology can make a big difference.