As hospitals continue to lower readmission rates and satisfy new value-based incentives, mortality rates have also dropped, signaling improvement in care quality.
A new study published in JAMA analyzed about 5 million Medicare fee-for-service hospitalizations between 2008 and 2014 and found that 30-day readmission rates declined for all conditions studied—heart failure, acute myocardial infarction and pneumonia. While 30-day mortality rates slightly increased for heart failure patients over that time, they dropped for acute myocardial patients and remained steady for those with pneumonia.
Hospitals have lowered readmissions through improved transitional and post-acute care by better preparing patients and families for discharge, integrating care across settings and following up in a timely manner, researchers said.
“Thousands and thousands of readmissions are being avoided every year without any evidence of people being harmed. That is a victory of improving the quality of care,” study co-author Dr. Harlan Krumholz, a professor of cardiology at Yale University, said in a statement.