Hospital Readmissions and Revisits in Massachusetts


Hospital
Readmission and Revisit 
Reporting


Readmission Image
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Hospital readmissions and revisits are a central issue in efforts to improve health care quality and reduce costs. Readmissions and revisits are a costly and potentially preventable problem impacting patient health and experience of care both nationally and in Massachusetts. CHIA work in this area includes:

Readmissions

  • New! CHIA’s latest report on Hospital-Wide Adult All-Payer Readmissions in Massachusetts: SFY 2011-2023 presents statewide and hospital-level readmission rates with an in-depth analysis of readmission trends by patient demographics, diagnoses, and payer type. The latest SFY 2011-2023 reporting also includes an interactive dashboard that provide more in-depth readmission statistics for each hospital broken out by several factors and presented in the context of the statewide figures.

 

 

  • Behavioral Health and Readmissions in Massachusetts Acute Care Hospitals is a statewide, all-payer examination of the prevalence of behavioral health comorbidities and readmissions among hospitalized adults in Massachusetts acute care hospitals. Given the high hospital utilization and cost associated with comorbid behavioral health conditions, stakeholders share a growing awareness that patients with behavioral health comorbidities may have a higher than average risk of readmissions, thus any efforts to reduce readmissions should include identifying risk factors associated with these populations.

 

Revisits

Providers, payers, and policymakers are increasingly turning their attention to whether the patient returns to the acute care setting at any level (emergency department (ED), observation, or inpatient) within 30 days of inpatient discharge.

Emergency Department Visits After Inpatient Discharge: SFY 2017, released in June 2019, analyzed emergency department (ED) revisits (defined as an ED visit within 30 days of a patient's inpatient discharge). This work expanded upon CHIA's readmissions research.

 

Accounting for Social Risk Factors in Public Reporting on Unplanned Hospital Readmissions in Massachusetts: A Workgroup Report

In February 2020, CHIA released a report from the statewide Social Risk Factors and Readmissions Workgroup, which details the proposed solution for accounting for social risk factors in the public reporting of all-payer, unplanned hospital readmissions.

In 2018 and 2019, CHIA convened a multi-stakeholder workgroup to consider whether CHIA should account for social risk factors in its analysis of hospital readmissions, and if so, to provide recommendations for doing so given the available data sources and methods.

CHIA has adopted a conceptual framework for social risk factors and expanded its existing risk-adjustment model to incorporate patient- and community-level social risk factors. This enhanced methodology is utilized in CHIA's March 2022 annual readmissions report.