Fiercehealthcare writes: although hospitals make efforts to prevent heart failure readmissions, few have achieved meaningful reductions in recent years, according to research presented at the Heart Failure Society of America Annual Scientific Meeting and published in the Journal of Cardiac Failure. Heart failure is one of the targets under the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program. Nearly 1 in 4 patients are readmitted to hospitals within 30 days of discharge due to the condition, according to Kristen E. Bergethon, an M.D. candidate at Duke Clinical Research Institute, who led the research. Bergethon and her research team analyzed data from 21,264 heart failure patients at 70 U.S. sites from January 2009 to October 2012. Risk-adjusted 30-day heart failure readmission rates improved only slightly over the study period, falling from 20.2 percent to 19.05 percent, according to the study.
Read study: Lack of Improvement in 30-day Readmission Rates for Patients Hospitalized with Heart Failure: Data from Get With The Guidelines-Heart Failure Registry. Journal of Cardiac Failure