Readmissions

Prepared by the Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association and Collaborative Healthcare Strategies Incentives targeting readmission reduction are intended to improve the delivery of care across settings and over time, and to reduce the losses and inefficiencies created by avoidable returns to the hospital. The public and private sector call for hospitals to reduce readmissions is not ne...» Full Article

One of only 26 national Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovations Grants Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center will receive $4.9 million from the highly competitive first round of Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation Grants, to launch a Post-Acute Care Transitions (PACT) program designed to improve patient outcomes and prevent avoidable cost in the high-risk 30-day period following acu...» Full Article

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center will collaborate in two additional federal innovation awards announced last week: one with Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center as part of the High Value Healthcare Collaborative (HVHC) and one with Mayo Clinic. These awards were announced as part of the second and final round of Innovation Grants awarded by the federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovat...» Full Article

A program at the Norwell VNA and Hospice that targets patients with Heart Failure (HF) has proven successful in reducing hospital admissions and readmission. The Norwell model relies on two foundational elements: (1) a strong clinical commitment to chronic care management using a wide-ranging team of providers and the patient, and (2) early intervention using telehealth technology. All of No...» Full Article

The results are in from Partners HealthCare's Medicare demonstration project that was conducted at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).In August, 2006, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) funded the MGH and the hospital's physician organization to launch the Care Management Program at MGH, one of six demonstration projects nationwide. During the three-year demonstration, the MGH develop...» Full Article

In 2011, MetroWest HomeCare & Hospice, in partnership with MetroWest Medical Center, initiated a strategic and evidence based effort to reduce their emergent care visits and acute care hospitalization rates. The effort was initiated with the formation in November 2011 of MetroWest's Re-Admission Intervention Strategy Council (RISC).  The RISC includes representatives from management, nursi...» Full Article

A variety of different measures all point to one inescapable fact: readmissions of Medicare patients at Massachusetts hospitals are steadily decreasing, according to a new MHA analysis. Statistics over the past decade show that Massachusetts hospitals, as well as hospitals nationwide, over the past decade at first had incremental improvements in readmissions before experiencing a significant dr...» Full Article

The percentage of patients admitted to a hospital with a mental health condition - either as a primary or a secondary diagnosis - is rising and often these patients experience delirium, alcohol withdrawal and suicide harm (DASH), which put them at an increased risk for higher-than-average readmission rates. In a new report in the July 2015 edition of The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and ...» Full Article

Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA) and Hallmark Health, in collaboration with Somerville Cambridge Elder Services and Mystic Valley Elder Services, are among the top performers in an innovative national pilot program to reduce hospital readmission rates. The four organizations, known collectively as the Mystic Valley Community-Based Organization, joined 71 other community-based organizations (CB...» Full Article