Consume with Care: Could Retail Clinics Help Reduce Hospital Readmissions?
The U.S. has one of the highest hospital readmission rates in the world. About 20 percent of Medicare patients wind up being readmitted within 30 days after discharge, according to government data. In Canada and England, that figure is only about 8 percent. Hospitals have tried a variety of strategies including patient counseling and home visits to lower readmissions, with mixed results. The office that administers Medicare is hoping that new financial penalties, part of the Affordable Care Act, will push hospitals to tackle the problem more aggressively. This year nearly two thirds of the hospitals in the U.S. will be penalized for having high readmission rates and will lose a combined total of $280 million in Medicare reimbursements. The cut in payments is scheduled to increase from up to 1 percent this year to 2 percent next year, and then to 3 percent in 2015. [More] ...