Dive Brief:
- A new study in BMJ Quality and Safety found 3M software, used by most U.S. hospitals and designed to flag patient cases that could result in preventable readmissions, showed care was better among cases flagged as being "potentially preventable."
- The study authors used ICD-9 codes to identify 11,278 readmissions following treatment for pneumonia at the Veterans Health Administration. The software was used to identify whether readmissions were "preventable." Out of 100 random samples, 77 were flagged as preventable.
- The researchers concluded the resulting confusion would exist regardless of the codes used, and the problems would continue under the new ICD-10 codes.
Dive Insight:
The authors found quality scores did not differ significantly between preventable and non-preventable cases.
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality estimates preventable hospital readmissions cost $41 billion in additional hospital expenses every year. According to Modern Healthcare, more than 2,600 U.S. hospitals with high readmission rates will have their Medicare payments cut up to 3% in 2016 for poor performance.
Donna Fleming Runyon, a 3M spokeswoman told Modern Healthcare, "Our work will continue as always and our plans and product timeline will be carried out as scheduled and the dedication to helping all our customers achieve ICD-10 success is there, strong as it ever was."