Dive Brief:
- In its third year of doling out fines for excessive preventable hospital readmissions, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is penalizing 2,610 hospitals. In 2013, 18% of hospitalized Medicare patients, or 2 million patients, were readmitted within 30 days. This cost Medicare $26 billion, of which an estimated $17 billion was potentially avoidable.
- Three-quarters of all eligible hospitals are receiving penalties even though readmission rates are dropping across the country (nearly 1,500 are exempt from the penalties for various reasons). The fines this year will pinch more because they were increased to 3% of Medicare reimbursements on all patients this year, the highest allowed under the Affordable Care Act. CMS estimates the fines will total $428 million between Oct. 1 of this year and Sept. 30, 2015.
- This year, 433 more hospitals received fines than in the previous year. This was due, in part, to an increase in the number of conditions evaluated under the program. Along with heart failure, heart attack and pneumonia, elective knee or hip replacements and lung ailments like chronic bronchitis were added to the list.
Dive Insight:
Also just released is a study looking at the most effective ways to reduce all-cause and unplanned 30-day readmissions. In the October issue of The Hospitalist, researchers used a meta-analysis of 47 randomized trials. The studies included seven different methods of prevention including case management, home visits, patient education and support for patient self-care. The researchers noted that the interventions that proved most effective were typically the more complex ones involving augmenting post-discharge care.