Reg's Blog

Hospital Re-Admissions: Update to an Earlier Post

Last week I wrote about hospitals using “observation stays” as a means of dealing with the potential risk of reimbursement penalties imposed by CMS for certain re-admissions.  The focus of my post was on how the trend of hospitals using observation stays to avoid CMS scrutiny (and penalties) was impacting Medicare admissions at SNFs.  I concluded my post with a few strategies that SNFs could use to deal with this growing phenomenon.

Today while reviewing my always copious amounts of industry e-mails, I ran across a story about a non-profit coalition in Alabama called AQAF that is working on addressing the issue of hospital readmissions.  This group comprised of home health providers, hospitals and SNFs is one of 14 groups contracted with CMS in a pilot program known as “care transitions”.  The objective of the groups is to develop strategies and processes to reduce what CMS considers to be, avoidable hospital re-admissions.

Knowing many of you read (and some commented) on my post regarding observation stays, I thought you may enjoy the story on the Alabama project.  The link to the story is here: http://blog.al.com/living-news/2010/02/project_aims_to_reduce_hospita.html

March 3, 2010 Posted by Reg Hislop III | Policy and Politics - Federal, Skilled Nursing | Compliance, Home Health, Hospitals, Medicare, Nursing Homes, SNF | 2 Comments