'Hotspotting' patients with extensive needs fails to reduce hospital readmissions

As a method for reducing health costs and improving care for people with complex medical problems, an early effort at "hotspotting" patients to get extra attention has turned out to be not so hot. Researchers, including J-PAL affiliate Amy Finkelstein, looked at so-called "superutilizer" patients who require a disproportionate amount of medical resources - in part because they're poor or don't have someone to look out for them when they leave the hospital.