ST. LOUIS, Mo. (KMOX) – Once you get released from the hospital, nobody wants to go right back in. Right? Well, a new study finds it is happening a lot more in the St. Louis area than throughout the nation as a whole.

It’s called hospital readmissions. Anne Weiss with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation says the national average for patients returning to the hospital after surgery is 12.4 percent. In St. Louis, that number jumps to 13.8 percent.

“However we’ve also seen more positive change in the last couple of years,” Weiss said. “We’ve seen those rates of avoidable readmissions coming down in St. Louis. So something is starting to happen there.”

Tips to avoid readmission include leaving the hospital the first time with a written plan in hand detailing medications to take and follow up visits to make. Also get family members involved in the discharge process.