Medical Xpress January 22, 2026
For more than a decade, hospitals have worked to help older adults avoid repeated inpatient stays, incentivized by a federal program that cuts Medicare reimbursements if hospitals have higher-than-expected rates of readmissions for people with certain conditions.
The Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program has helped spur innovation, including initiatives to better prepare patients and their families to manage care after hospitalization, and to support them virtually at home.
But a new University of Michigan study finds that these financial penalties have hit some hospitals harder than they should, even if those hospitals have done a reasonable job at keeping people with heart failure, pneumonia and other serious conditions from ending up back in a hospital within a month of leaving one.
...Today's Sponsors
Today's Sponsor