title: Hospital readmissions: measuring for improvement, accountability, and patients.
abstract: The Commonwealth Fund and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement convened 15 experts in May 2013 to help address the current controversy over the measurement of hospital readmissions. Experts agreed that Medicare should, through payment and other means, be encouraging greater coordination of care, improvement in care transitions, and mitigation of risks that leave patients vulnerable to readmission. While the current readmissions metric is undoubtedly an imperfect proxy for broader health system failures, it also provides a valuable foundation on which to build a better policy—one that is useful for improvement, fair for accountability, and above all, relevant to patients.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Healthcare Improvement, USA. sloehrer@ihi.org
authors.forename: Clifford
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Marks
authors.forename: Saranya
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Loehrer
authors.forename: Douglas
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: McCarthy
mesh_terms: D003266:Continuity of Patient Care / Q000191:economics / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D006278:Medicare / Q000191:economics / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D010359:Patient Readmission / Q000191:economics / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D058996:Quality Improvement; D014481:United States