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Differences in regional hospital readmission rates for heart failure are more closely tied to the availability of care andsocioeconomics than to hospital performance or patients' degree ofillness, according to research presented at the American HeartAssociation's Quality of Care & Outcomes Research ScientificSessions 2012. U.S. regional readmission rates for heart failure vary widely -from 10 percent to 32 percent - researchers found. Communities withhigher rates were likely to have more physicians and hospital bedsand their populations were likely to be poor, black and relativelysicker. People 65 and older are also readmitted more frequently. To cut costs, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services plans to penalize hospitals with higher readmission ratesrelated to heart failure, heart attack and pneumonia . Next year, hospitals with higher-than-average 30-day readmissionrates will face reductions in Medicare payments. But the penalties don't address the supply and societal influencesthat can increase readmission rates, said Karen E. Joynt, M.D.,lead author of the study and an instructor at Brigham and Women'sHospital, Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of PublicHealth in Boston, Mass. "We have to find ways to help hospitals and communities addressthis problem together, as opposed to putting the burden onhospitals alone," said Joynt. "We need to think less aboutcomparing hospitals to each other in terms of their performance andmore about looking at improvement in hospitals and communities." Researchers found: Supply-side factors including availability of doctors andhospitals beds were the strongest predictors of differences inreadmission rates, accounting for 17 percent. Poverty and minority racial makeup was linked to 9 percent of thevariation in readmission rates. Hospital-performance quality accounted for 5 percent and patients'degree of illness 4 percent. "To really address the readmissions issue, we need to think aboutthis in terms of community and population health," Joynt said."Focusing on community-level factors - such as the supply and mixof physicians and targeting efforts towards poor and minoritycommunities - may be more fruitful approaches to reducingreadmissions We need to think outside the walls of the hospital." Researchers analyzed national billing records of more than 3,000hospitals in 2008-09 for more than 1 million elderly Medicarepatients with heart failure. Of the patients in the review, 55percent were female, 11 percent were black and they had an averageage of 81. The observational analysis didn't include all potential influences,such as other illnesses, Joynt said. Additional References Citations. We are high quality suppliers, our products such as China Neoprene Laptop Cases , China Wired or Wireless Mouse for oversee buyer. To know more, please visits USB Power Packs.
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