MedPage Today November 17, 2019
-Harvard study offers alternative explanation
There’s no arguing against the fact that 30-day readmissions for certain conditions targeted by a federal initiative to improve quality of care are on the decline.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program is getting a lot of credit for the decline. Since 2010, the program had dinged hospital Medicare reimbursement for a range of preventable readmissions for conditions such as pneumonia and heart failure.
However, in a recent study in Health Affairs, researchers at Harvard Medical School are offering an alternative explanation that the drop in readmissions is being driven by an overall decline in hospital admissions.
“The decline in readmission rates looked like the silver lining of pay-for-performance, but...
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