In an AHASTAT blog post today, AHA President and CEO Rick Pollack responds to a recent Wall Street Journal analysis that questioned the recent reductions in hospital readmissions. “Here is what the numbers show,” Pollack writes. “Between January 2012 and November 2014, hospitals participating in the American Hospital Association Partnership for Patients initiative avoided 65,022 readmissions generating health care savings of nearly $575 million. Additionally, an analysis in a 2014 [Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services] peer-reviewed journal did not find evidence to suggest the drop in readmissions rates was the result of increases in either emergency department visits or observation stays as CMS stated in the article. It is no coincidence that the increase in observation services occurred with the advent of the Recovery Audit Contractors program. Too often, the medical judgment of treating physicians was second-guessed by RACs, which could evaluate a beneficiary’s admission in hindsight, looking at the entire medical record rather than only the information that was known to the physician at the time of the admission.”

Related News Articles

Perspective
Public
The 2025 AHA Leadership Summit wrapped up on July 22, and as always, it was energizing and inspiring to connect with so many talented and dedicated people…
Headline
The AHA July 24 announced it is collaborating with health care technology leader Epic to help hospitals adopt tools that support the early detection and…
Headline
Carolyn Bogard, DNP, R.N., director of care coordination and palliative care at El Camino Health, talks about her system’s use of data to harness the passion…
Headline
Hartford HealthCare in Hartford, Conn., will receive the 2025 AHA Quest for Quality Prize as a result of their sweeping transformation over the past decade —…
Headline
A Q&A in the July edition of AHA Trustee Insights features leaders from Winchester Hospital in Massachusetts discussing the importance of board members…
Headline
To help hospitals across the country improve sepsis care, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention created the Hospital Sepsis Program Core Elements,…