Dive Brief:
- New HHS research, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, demonstrates that hospital readmissions dropped significantly after the enactment of the Affordable Care Act.
- An HHS blog post by Rachael Zuckerman suggests the ACA's Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program, as well as numerous CMS quality improvement initiatives, are working.
- The HHS data finds that between April 2010 and May 2015, about 565,000 readmissions were prevented across all conditions.
Dive Insight:
A main point researchers sought to address was the question of whether hospital readmissions are being artificially reduced by classifying returning patients as under observation stays rather than readmitted, in order for hospitals to avoid the ACA's new readmission penalties.
"The new research shows that this isn’t the case," Zuckerman writes.
HHS data indicates observation stays began increasing steadily by at least 2008 and saw no acceleration following the enactment of the ACA.
Perhaps even more telling, the blog adds, is that total returns to the hospital within 30 days, including readmissions and observation stays, has seen a similar downward trend as readmissions alone.
The findings refute previous research indicating that observation status is substituting for readmissions at at least some hospitals, and that questions remain about impacts to quality of care.