Surveyors will be checking to see how well hospital discharge procedures facilitate SNF transfers

Socioeconomicdifferences and factors such as the availability of physicians have abigger impact on readmission rates for heart failure than a provider’sperformance, a new study asserts.
 
Starting next year, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Serviceswill penalize healthcare providers with high readmission rates for heartfailure in an effort to reduce hospitalization costs. But doing thisfails to address the community members’ health and access to healthcare,according to an analysis of Harvard Medical School researchers.
 
In an observational analysis of billing records for more than onemillion Medicare beneficiaries with heart failure, researchers foundthat factors such as the availability of physicians and the number ofbeds a facility had were the strongest predictors of differences inreadmission rates, representing 17% of the variation in rates. Aprovider’s quality performance accounted for just 4% of the variation,according to lead author, Karen E. Joynt, M.D., while poverty andminority status represented 9% of the variation.
 
The research was presented at the American Heart Association’s Qualityof Care & Outcomes Research Scientific Sessions 2012, held this weekin Baltimore.