For Patients with Three Common Conditions, Fewer Readmissions Didn't Lead to Higher 30-Day Mortality

The Affordable Care Act established the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP), which mandated that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services penalize hospitals with higher-than-expected readmission rates. This consequence has led to declining readmission rates for patients with targeted conditions of heart failure (HF), acute myocardial infarction (MI), and pneumonia. However, concern has been raised that the HRRP unintentionally could lead to higher mortality.

Researchers attempted to address that concern by looking at more than 6 million Medicare fee-for-service hospitalizations for HF, MI, and pneumonia at 5000 hospitals between 2008 and 2014. Reductions in risk-adjusted, 30-day hospital readmission rates were weakly, but sign…