Latest News On Readmissions

Latest KFF Health News Stories

2013 Medicare Readmissions Penalties By Region

KFF Health News Original

Medicare evaluated the readmission rates of 3,104 hospitals in determining the first year of penalties in the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program, ultimately penalizing 71 percent of those hospitals. The first column in this chart lists 305 hospital referral regions, which are area health care markets identified by the Dartmouth Atlas. The second column in this chart […]

2013 Medicare Readmissions Penalties By State

KFF Health News Original

Medicare evaluated the readmission rates of 3,104 hospitals in determining the first year of penalties in the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program, ultimately penalizing 71 percent of those hospitals. This chart lists states in the first column. The second column shows how many hospitals in each state had at least 25 heart attack, heart failure or […]

Sources and Methodology: Where the Hospital Readmissions Data Came From

KFF Health News Original

Kaiser Health News’ data on hospital readmissions penalties comes from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which oversees the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program. On Aug. 1, CMS published data tables containing the “Readmissions Adjustment Factor” for individual hospitals. More On Readmission Penalties Medicare To Penalize 2,211 Hospitals For Excess Readmissions Hospitals Treating The […]

Medicare IDs Few Hospitals As Outliers In Readmissions

KFF Health News Original

Correction: An earlier version of this report incorrectly listed 10 hospitals as having better than average readmission rates for heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia patients. Only two hospitals, Citrus Memorial Hospital of Inverness, Fla. and Sarasota Memorial Hospital of Sarasota, Fla., had better than average readmission rates for those three conditions tracked by Medicare’s Hospital Compare […]

The Revolving Door Of Readmissions

KFF Health News Original

Ralph Rust’s decade-long struggle to stay out of hospitals involves some of the factors that cause patients to be readmitted frequently. For years he was hospitalized as often as three times a month.

Study Suggests Readmission Rates May Reflect Broader Hospital Use

KFF Health News Original

The high rate of hospital readmissions has produced a flurry of policy solutions to improve care for patients as they’re being discharged and afterward. But new research suggests more concern might be directed elsewhere: at the doctors who decide not just to send patients back to the hospital, but to admit them in the first […]

Readmissions Not Just A Medicare Problem, Study Finds

KFF Health News Original

Medicare has identified preventable hospital readmissions as a measure of the fragmentation of health care for the elderly, driving up health care costs. A new paper finds younger patients also fail to get needed follow-up care after a hospital stay. About one in 12 adults ages 21 and older were readmitted to hospitals within 30 days of discharge, […]

Cutting Hospital Readmissions: Revolving Doors Still Spinning, Study Finds

KFF Health News Original

As Medicare figures out how to financially penalize hospitals with high readmission rates, a new Dartmouth Atlas study finds hospitals have made very little progress in ensuring that fewer patients return. One possible reason raised by the study: fewer than half of patients had a follow-up appointment with a doctor within two weeks of discharge. […]

Seven Hospitals Share Distinction Of Highest Readmission Rates

KFF Health News Original

As Medicare prepares to start punishing hospitals with higher-than-average readmissions, seven hospitals have a particularly dubious distinction: higher-than-average rates for three kinds of patients. These hospitals all had worse readmission rates than the average hospital for heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia patients — the three categories Medicare tracks. The hospitals were: San Juan VA […]