Researchers Submit Patent Application, “System For Adaptive Hospital Discharge”, for Approval (USPTO 20230105348): Patent Application

2023 APR 24 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- From Washington, D.C., NewsRx journalists report that a patent application by the inventors Schmid, Walter (Seefeld, DE); Vodencarevic, Asmir (Furth, DE), filed on September 27, 2021, was made available online on April 6, 2023.

No assignee for this patent application has been made.

News editors obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “Acute hospital admissions are common for patients suffering from various diseases and especially for those suffering from chronic diseases such as Heart Failure (HF). HF is a global epidemic that poses a large societal burden not only for the patients and their families but also an economic burden for the healthcare system. The most frequently identified drivers that impact the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio are treatment costs and utility. Unplanned hospital admissions may happen due to multiple reasons and are often related to an abrupt worsening of the patient’s vital signs and symptoms. For example, an abrupt worsening in HF patients typically includes dyspnea, fatigue and swelling of feet and legs and is referred to as Acute Decompensated Heart Failure (ADHF). During an acute patient hospitalization, for example due to the ADHF, one or more procedures such as laboratory tests are performed and one or several treatments are administered with the purpose of improving and stabilizing the health status of the patient. After administering the treating for a certain time (e.g., several days or weeks), a clinician might decide to discharge the patient after considering the latest relevant medical parameters, for example, laboratory values and their trends (e.g., stabile normal blood pressure and oxygen saturation).

“Decisions about discharging patients are typically made based on the best clinical judgements of the treating clinicians. Nevertheless, many patients are readmitted due to the same or similar reason oftentimes within relatively short timeframe after the patients have been discharged. Readmission after discharge is associated with clinical and financial burden to patients, hospitals, and society. As an example of a financial burden, readmission is used as a publicly reported metric with reimbursement implications to hospitals by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). For hospitals with excess risk-standardized readmission rates, CMS has lowered the reimbursement for certain clinical conditions such as acute myocardial infarction (AMI), heart failure (HF), pneumonia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, total hip arthroplasty, and total knee arthroplasty.

“CMS and other entities have used their reimbursement policies to encourage hospitals to implement measures for avoiding readmissions. For example, to try to reduce avoidable readmissions, hospitals might impose policies to improve communication and care coordination, e.g., by extending the patients’ length of stay in order to treat and/or observe them longer. Such measures might decrease the risk of a short-term readmission; however, they increase the overall hospital costs. The longer the patient stays in the hospital, the higher the actual costs are and at some point, the costs of keeping a patient can reach and exceed the reimbursable flat-rate costs (“crossover point”). Moreover, as the number of hospital beds is a limited and oftentimes a scarce resource, extending occupancy by a patient inevitably means that the bed is not available for other patients.”

As a supplement to the background information on this patent application, NewsRx correspondents also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent application: “By way of introduction, the preferred embodiments described below include embodiments for individual readmission risk prediction and discharge planning.

“In a first aspect, a method is provided for individual readmission risk prediction, the method comprising: acquiring data about a patient; computing, using a time-varying readmission risk prediction model, a time-varying readmission risk prediction for the patient; presenting the time-varying readmission risk prediction in relation to a length of stay and a cost analysis; generating a discharge plan based on the presented time-varying readmission risk prediction and a pre-defined acceptable readmission risk threshold; and discharging the patient after the time-varying readmission risk prediction drops below the pre-defined acceptable readmission risk threshold.

“In a second aspect, a system is provided for individual readmission risk prediction. The system includes a patient datastore, a hospital datastore, a time-varying readmission risk prediction model, and a discharge planner. The patient datastore is configured to store at least patient data. The hospital datastore is configured to store at least cost data for treatment of a patient and a reimbursement policy. The time-varying readmission risk prediction model is configured to generate a predicted readmission risk based on the patient data. The discharge planner is configured to generate a discharge plan based on the predicted readmission risk, the cost data, and the reimbursement policy.

“In a third aspect, a non-transitory computer implemented storage medium is provided including machine-readable instructions stored therein, that when executed by at least one processor, cause the processor to: acquire data about a patient; compute, using a time-varying readmission risk prediction model, a time-varying readmission risk prediction for the patient; present the time-varying readmission risk prediction in relation to a length of stay and a cost analysis; generate a discharge plan based on the presented time-varying readmission risk prediction and a pre-defined acceptable readmission risk threshold; and generate instructions to discharge the patient after the time-varying readmission risk prediction drops below the pre-defined acceptable readmission risk threshold.

“The present invention is defined by the following claims, and nothing in this section should be taken as a limitation on those claims. Further aspects and advantages of the invention are discussed below in conjunction with the preferred embodiments and may be later claimed independently or in combination.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A method for individual readmission risk prediction, the method comprising: acquiring data about a patient; computing, using a time-varying readmission risk prediction model, a time-varying readmission risk prediction for the patient; presenting the time-varying readmission risk prediction in relation to a length of stay and a cost analysis; generating a discharge plan based on the presented time-varying readmission risk prediction and a pre-defined acceptable readmission risk threshold; and discharging the patient after the time-varying readmission risk prediction drops below the pre-defined acceptable readmission risk threshold.

“2. The method of claim 1, wherein the time-varying readmission risk prediction model comprises a Cox proportional hazard model.

“3. The method of claim 1, wherein the time-varying readmission risk prediction model comprises a random survival forest model.

“4. The method of claim 1, wherein the time-varying readmission risk prediction model comprises a multi-task logistic regression model.

“5. The method of claim 1, wherein computing is repeated when new patient data becomes available.

“6. The method of claim 1, further comprising: selecting one or more treatments for the patient; wherein the time-varying readmission risk prediction is computed for different treatments of the one or more treatments to estimate an optimal discharge plan.

“7. The method of claim 1, wherein computing, presenting, and generating are performed at regular intervals or upon a clinician’s request during the patient’s stay.

“8. The method of claim 1, wherein the cost analysis takes into account actual costs for the length of stay and a reimbursement policy.

“9. The method of claim 8, wherein the reimbursement policy penalizes readmissions within a time period of admission.

“10. A system for individual readmission risk prediction, the system comprising: a patient datastore configured to store at least patient data; a hospital datastore configured to store at least cost data for treatment of a patient and a reimbursement policy; a time-varying readmission risk prediction model configured to generate a predicted readmission risk based on the patient data; a discharge planner configured to generate a discharge plan based on the predicted readmission risk, the cost data, and the reimbursement policy.

“11. The system of claim 10, further comprising an interface configured to display the discharge plan.

“12. The system of claim 10, wherein the time-varying readmission risk prediction model comprises a Cox proportional hazard model.

“13. The system of claim 10, wherein the time-varying readmission risk prediction model comprises a random survival forest model.

“14. The system of claim 10, wherein the time-varying readmission risk prediction model comprises a multi-task logistic regression model.

“15. The system of claim 10, wherein the time-varying readmission risk prediction model is configured to adapt the predicted readmission risk when providing new patient data.

“16. The system of claim 10, wherein the reimbursement policy penalizes readmissions within a time period of admission.

“17. The system of claim 10, wherein the discharge planner is further configured to generate the discharge plan using a predefined threshold for the predicted readmission risk.

“18. A non-transitory computer implemented storage medium, including machine-readable instructions stored therein, that when executed by at least one processor, cause the processor to: acquire data about a patient; compute, using a time-varying readmission risk prediction model, a time-varying readmission risk prediction for the patient; present the time-varying readmission risk prediction in relation to a length of stay and a cost analysis; generate a discharge plan based on the presented time-varying readmission risk prediction and a pre-defined acceptable readmission risk threshold; and generate instructions to discharge the patient after the time-varying readmission risk prediction drops below the pre-defined acceptable readmission risk threshold.

“19. The non-transitory computer implemented storage medium of claim 18, wherein the time-varying readmission risk prediction model comprises one of a Cox proportional hazard model, a random survival forest model, a multi-task logistic regression model, or any other model capable of computing the time-varying readmission risk prediction.

“20. The non-transitory computer implemented storage medium of claim 18, wherein the cost analysis takes into account actual costs for the length of stay and a reimbursement policy.”

For additional information on this patent application, see: Schmid, Walter; Vodencarevic, Asmir. System For Adaptive Hospital Discharge. U.S. Patent Application Number 20230105348, filed September 27, 2021 and posted April 6, 2023. Patent URL (for desktop use only): https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/external.html?q=(20230105348)&db=US-PGPUB&type=ids

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