In 2013 the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP), an initiative of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), authorized the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to penalize hospitals for thirty-day readmission rates exceeding the national average.
Safety-net hospital patients, who frequently lack access to primary care and other support, have a higher chance of readmission. As a result, policy makers have called for modifications in the HRRP to remove a perceived unfair burden on safety-net hospitals.
A new Health Affairs study, Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program: Safety-Net Hospitals Show Improvement, Modifications To Penalty Formula Still Needed, by Kathleen Carey and Meng-Yun Lin, compared thirty-day readmission rates of safety-net hospitals and other hospitals for fiscal years 2013 and 2016. Three conditions were evaluated: heart attack, heart failure, and pneumonia.
According to the study, readmission rates during that time declined more at safety-net hospitals than at other hospitals in the overall sample for each condition (see exhibit), with heart attack readmissions declining 2.86 percentage points at safety-net hospitals, compared to 2.64 percentage points at other hospitals.
The authors, who obtained their data from Medicare’s Hospital Compare website, note that while safety-net hospitals’ thirty-day readmission rates have declined at a higher rate than other hospitals, the former group had greater room for improvement.
“In refining the HRRP, policy makers should bear in mind that a penalty program may not provide the best lever for incentivizing performance improvement in safety-net hospitals,” the authors concluded. “It would be advisable for CMS to pay attention to characteristics of hospitals that succeed in reducing readmissions as it modifies and expands the HRRP.”
from Health Affairs BlogHealth Affairs Blog http://ift.tt/2dbH7dJ
No comments:
Post a Comment