Hospital readmissions on the decline, says CMS
By HME News Staff
Updated Thu September 15, 2016
WASHINGTON - CMS says the Hospital Readmissions Reduction program, which adjusts payments for hospitals with higher than expected 30-day readmission rates for targeted clinical conditions, and the Partnership for Patients program, which aims to decrease preventable complications during a transition from one care setting to another, are working. As a result of the programs, readmission rates have fallen by more than 5% in 43 states and more than 10% in 11 states, according to CMS's newly released data. “Across states, Medicare beneficiaries avoided almost 104,000 readmissions in 2015 alone, compared to if readmission rates had stayed constant at 2010 levels,” wrote Patrick Conway, principal deputy administrator and chief medical officer, CMS, in a recent blog post. “Since 2010, the HHS Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation estimates that Medicare beneficiaries have avoided 565,000 readmissions.”
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