A fourth of the 3.3 million Medicare beneficiaries who lived in a nursing home in 2011 were hospitalized for at least one day. This came at a cost of $14.3 billion, according to a Nov. 18 report from the Office of the Inspector General in the Department of Health and Human Services.
The OIG recommended, with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in accordance, that there should be a quality measure that reflects resident hospitalization rates, and that state survey agencies should consider using it.
Quality measures used in the government’s Five-Star Rating System correlated to hospitalization rates, the OIG found. Septicemia and pneumonia are the top illnesses leading to hospitalization.
CMS said it was developing a 30-day all-cause hospital readmissions measure for SNFs with plans to submit it to the National Quality Forum by the end of 2013.
From the January 01, 2014 Issue of McKnight's Long-Term Care News
