Data on CMS Readmissions Penalties Now on WhyNotTheBest.org

For the first time, data from Medicare’s Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program are available on WhyNotTheBest.org, The Commonwealth Fund’s free health care performance benchmarking tool. These data—unavailable on Hospital Compare—enable users to see which hospitals received penalties (equal to a reduction of 1 percent or 2 percent of their full Medicare reimbursement) for having what the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) deemed an “excess” number of readmissions among acute myocardial infarction, heart failure, or pneumonia patients over a three-year period.