Nationwide, accountable care organizations report that it’s becoming more challenging to do business and the stakes are higher than ever. They are taking on more financial risk as CMS shifts Medicare Shared Savings Program ACOs into downside or two-sided risk tracks. Meanwhile, patients are aging, chronic conditions are on the rise and more specialists are…
Pairing community health workers with adult inpatients under accountable care organization insurance coverage reduced readmissions and missed appointments with outpatient providers during the first 30 days of discharge, according to a recently published Massachusetts General Hospital study. While these trends were greater among patients who were discharged to short-term rehabilitation, a subgroup analysis found that…
Researchers thought they had a way to keep hard-to-treat patients from constantly returning to the hospital and racking up big medical bills. Health workers visited homes, went along to doctor appointments, made sure medicines were available and tackled social problems including homelessness, addiction and mental health issues. Readmissions seemed to drop. The program looked so…
The notion that hospitals can reduce readmissions, and that punishing them for “excess” readmissions will get them to do that, became conventional wisdom during the 2000s on the basis of very little evidence. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) urged Congress to enact the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) beginning in 2007, and in 2010…
The notion that hospital readmission rates are a “quality” measure reached the status of conventional wisdom by the late 2000s. In their 2007 and 2008 reports to Congress, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) recommended that Congress authorize a program that would punish hospitals for “excess readmissions” of Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) enrollees. In 2010, Congress…
Does the care process end once the patient leaves the facility? Is the definition of a doctor limited to the four walls where a patient rarely spends the 16th minute? I could say without even thinking twice, the answer that would have come up in your mind is a clear ‘NO.’ We all can agree…
As healthcare organizations develop more sophisticated big data analytics capabilities, they are beginning to move from basic descriptive analytics towards the realm of predictive insights. Predictive analytics may only be the second of three steps along the journey to analytics maturity, but it actually represents a huge leap forward for many organizations. Instead of simply…
After Columbus (Neb.) Community Hospital staff networked with area healthcare providers, pharmacists, assisted living and nursing home facilities, the hospital reduced 30-day readmissions by about 42 percent from October 2016 to May 2018, the Columbus Telegram reports. The Nebraska Hospital Association recently recognized the 47-bed hospital for its efforts to improve patient care, including its…
Reducing readmissions is every hospital’s goal, but “There is a component of readmissions that has very little to do with hospital care,” said Amy Deutschendorf, MS, RN, vice president for care coordination and clinical resource management for the Johns Hopkins Health System. She groups the common causes of readmissions into five categories: 1) poor care…
Let’s face it. There’s a pretty low bar to meeting Medicare’s ACO Quality requirements. Most ACOs have achieved acceptable quality performance for Medicare Shared Savings Plans (MSSPs). They have not, however, achieved the savings needed to be successful. ACO supporters point to the “Triple Aim” of achieving higher quality, cost savings and good patient experience…