Healthcare Finance writes: Quality improvement programs are often effective at reducing hospital readmissions, especially among patients with certain ailments. A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, however, showed that slashing readmission rates may not actually save those hospitals money. Reviewing data from more than 16,700 patients, it was clear that quality improvement initiatives do have an effect on hospitals’ readmission rates; on average, they dropped about 12 percent for heart failure patients and roughly 6 percent for adults with a variety of other conditions.
Read more:
- Economic Evaluation of Quality Improvement Interventions Designed to Prevent Hospital Readmission. A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. JAMA. May 30, 2017.
- Healthcare Finance: http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/quality-improvement-programs-reduce-readmissions-hospitals-may-not-see-huge-savings-say