Dive Brief:
- Fueled by a $5 million grant, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center has managed to reduce readmissions by 25% through its post-discharge program.
- In 2012, BIDMC had one of the country's highest Medicare readmission rates. Clinical leaders realized that they weren't doing enough to ensure their health post-discharge. Having identified the problem, the hospital created the Post-Acute Transitions program with a $5 million federal grant.
- In the program, nurses and pharmacists monitor Medicare patients who appear to be at high risk for readmission, staying in touch with the patients, their caregivers and primary care providers to support the patient. The result so far has been a massive cut in readmissions at BIDMC.
Dive Insight:
When a hospital as prestigious as BIDMC is found to have some of the highest Medicare readmission rates in the country, it demonstrates clearly that high quality inpatient care is not necessarily a predictor of how likely the patients are to return. So, other facilities are walking down the same road. Hospitals across the country are looking at ways to reduce readmissions, with many of those efforts focused around post discharge care and handoffs to other health care settings (such as nursing homes). It seems clear that hospitals around the US need to follow Beth Israel's lead by staffing up and leveraging those staffers to do more post-discharge planning and support.