But many hospitals may also be tempted to game the system to improve their readmission statistics.
This readmission rule is similar to one soon to be imposed on hospitals under the 2010 health law.
Those readmission rates will also be reported on the Hospital Compare Web site.
FORBES: Giving Credit Where It's Due: Health Reform Promotes Radical Transparency
Although the ObamaCare readmission rules initially apply only to Medicare patients, private insurers tend to follow Medicare payment guidelines.
They could face significant conflicts-of-interest when they consider a patient readmission medically necessary but the hospital administrator thinks otherwise.
Will doctors compromise patient care when their readmission statistics are being monitored by someone who can terminate their employment contracts?
Several hospitals with above-average readmission rates also have below-average mortality rates.
That's double the readmission rate for those patients in Provo, Utah.
It would be interesting to see how readmission rates compare between those families that ar serving as DIY nurses, and those who can afford paid assistance.
FORBES: Half of Family Caregivers are Providing Nursing Services
Last year, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a review of models that predict which patients are at high risk for hospital readmission.
One goal will be to predict heart failure patients who are at risk of readmission and then develop protocols to help them stay out of the hospital.
"We prefer voluntary readmission, but we also agree that we must reserve the right to compulsory repatriation, " Danish Immigration Minister Bertel Haarder, whose country holds the EU presidency, said.
"Infection is a leading cause of readmission, a device could be put in to the body at the site of surgery just before it is closed up, " he said.
President Bush will do his bit in an address to the UN on Thursday in which he may seek the setting of a deadline for the readmission of weapons inspectors.
Once discharged they have the highest chance of readmission.
"With the British and Irish Lions heading to South Africa in just a few months these Tests are as important as any we have undertaken since our readmission in 1992, " he said.
And there is a mild incentive for virtue: the joyous welcome afforded to countries that gain readmission after a period of isolation (as happened to South Africa after apartheid or Pakistan when democracy returned).
The hospital readmission rule radically changes those incentives.
Mercy Health, a not-for-profit health system in Cincinnati, Ohio that owns six hospitals, was able to reduce its 30-day readmission rate to 14.5% as of November, from 16.9% in 2011, with a Care Transitions program that assigns nurses to high-risk patients to keep them out of the hospital.
Jude Medical, Inc. (NYSE:STJ), a global medical device company, announced today that an interim analysis of the FAME II trial has found a highly statistically significant reduction in the need for hospital readmission and urgent revascularization when Fractional Flow Reserve (FFR)-guided assessment was used to direct treatment in patients with coronary artery disease.
FORBES: New Enrollment in FAME II Halted After Interim Analysis Shows Benefits of FFR
应用推荐