While acknowledging the limitations of Medicare's penalty for "excess" hospital readmissions, experts from The Commonwealth Fund and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement say it provides a valuable foundation for building a better policy down the road—one that is useful for improvement, fair, and above all, responsive to patients' needs. In a new issue brief, these experts explore ways to enhance the readmissions measurement system to more fully capture patients’ experiences, ensure that health systems won’t eliminate necessary hospital care, and reflect how instrumental care coordination and community interventions are to health outcomes.
Also be sure to visit the Health Affairs blog for a related post on this topic by authors Clifford Marks, Saranya Loehrer, and Douglas McCarthy.