Did the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program Reduce Readmissions without Hurting Patient Outcomes at High Dual-Proportion Hospitals Prior to Stratification?

ABSTRACT: Since the implementation of Medicare's Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP), safety-net hospitals have received a disproportionate share of financial penalties for excess readmissions, raising concerns about the fairness of the policy. In response, the HRRP now stratifies hospitals into five quintiles by low-income Medicare (dual Medicare-Medicaid eligible) stay proportion and compares readmission rates within quintiles. To better understand the potential effects of the revised policy, we used difference-in-differences models to compare changes in 30-day readmission, 30-day mortality, and 90th-day community-dwelling rates after discharge of fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries hospitalized for acute myocardial infarction, heart failure and pneumonia during 2007-2014, for hospit

SUBMITTER: Yang Z 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8949751 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jan-Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature