Fierce Healthcare writes:A new study suggests hospitals that are penalized for their 30-day Medicare readmission numbers often have a limited ability to solve the problem. The Affordable Care Act’s Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) has targeted providers with incentives meant to reduce the rate of avoidable readmissions, in a bid to reduce overall healthcare costs. Researchers from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and the Virginia Commonwealth University looked at the trends that have developed over the first five years of the HRRP, during which time more than half of participating hospitals received penalties every year. They published their findings this week in Health Affairs. In cases where hospitals frequently received penalties, researchers wrote they saw “a sizable financial impact on particular hospitals, limiting their ability to meet the needs of the populations they serve and invest in quality improvement activities.”
Read more: http://www.fiercehealthcare.com/payer/study-persistent-readmission-rate-penalties-counterproductive