Dive Brief:
- New research has concluded that hospitals that wish to avoid preventable readmissions do better when they focus on patient care generally, rather than targeting conditions like heart failure, or timeframes such as 30 days post-discharge.
- Resesarchers tracked three years of Medicare data covering 600,000 30-day readmissions for heart failure, heart attack or pneumonia at more than 4,000 hospitals.
- The study, which appeared in the British Medical Journal, found that top -performing hospitals had fewer readmissions overall, regardless of condition.
Dive Insight:
The conclusions drawn by these researchers are important ones. Not only do they redirect hospital to focusing more broadly on patient vulnerabilities, they stand a chance of helping hospitals avoid the steadily rising 30-day readmissions penalties falling into place over the next few years. As things stand, however, more than 2,200 hospitals will lose up to 2% of their base-operating DRG payments in the coming year.