Is there a link between readmission and a hospital’s non-profit status?
It was the middle of winter in downtown Chicago in 1995, and I was sitting across from an apologetic alcoholic holding a slimy NG tube. Mr. Smith, an emaciated man in his sixties, had been on my service for three days with acute pancreatitis, and this was the fifth nasogastric tube that had “slipped” out of his nose.
Subsequently, his morning labs were just as bad as they had been on …