Medicare readmission penalties create quality metrics stress

(By – Sabriya Rice, www.modernhealthcare.com)

Medicare is four years into its drive to cut the number of patients who land back in the hospital within a few weeks of leaving, and only a quarter of more than 3,400 hospitals avoided penalties. The results are contributing to skepticism about the readmissions program and the broader array of metrics used to evaluate healthcare quality. “How’s that readmission penalty thing working out for Medicare?” asked Dr. Aaron Carroll, a health policy researcher and editor-in-chief for the Incidental Economist, a critical health policy blog. “Everyone sucks,” he said in a post citing concerns with the program. Read more…

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