Federal health officials say hospital readmissions were down in 2012 for the first time in five years. Kansas readmission rates also are dropping and various projects are underway to further reduce them. by KHI News Service

Is the whirl of hospital revolving doors slowing?

Federal health officials are now reporting that the rate of preventable and costly hospital readmissions is down for the first time in more than five years, which meant about 70,000 fewer hospital returns nationally in 2012 for the Medicare program alone.

With a strong push from the federal health reform law, scores of medical and social service workers around Kansas — like thousands of their counterparts in other states — are working together on projects that officials say show promise for reducing avoidable readmissions.

If they succeed, hospitals could be spared some of the Affordable Care Act penalties they face in the form of reduced Medicare payments and federal health care spending could be trimmed $8.2 billion by 2019, if projections from the Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) prove accurate.

Starting in October 2012, almost 30 of the 46 non-exempt Kansas hospitals were punished for relatively high readmission rates in the first year of the ACA program, according to information from CMS compiled by Kaiser Health News, a partner of KHI News Service.

Financial sting

Because of the potential financial sting attached, nobody wants to be on that penalty list when it’s redrawn for this year, especially since last year’s maximum penalty of a 1 percent reduction will grow to a maximum 2 percent and then 3 percent for 2014.

“Almost every hospital is looking at this, because they stand to gain or lose,” said Ken Mishler, chief executive of the Kansas Foundation for Medical Care, a Topeka-based, non-profit organization that is the federal government’s sole designated contractor in Kansas for improving health care quality. In federal parlance, the foundation is known as a Quality Improvement Organization or QIO.

Mishler’s group was directly involved with organizing projects in four locations - Hays, Topeka, Kansas City and Wichita – but there are others underway, too, including one by the Kansas Healthcare Collaborative, a 2008 creation of the Kansas Hospital Association and the Kansas Medical Society.

Lower rates

There is evidence the various efforts, some of which predate the ACA, may be working. The readmission rate in Kansas was already lower than the national average, but recent numbers show even that somewhat lower rate has dropped.

According to the Kansas Foundation for Medical Care there were 49.4 per 1,000 Medicare fee-for-service patients readmitted to Kansas hospitals within 30 days in 2011 versus 52.5 in 2010. That compares favorably to the national average of 56.8 per 1,000 in 2011 and 58.2 per 1,000 in 2010. Foundation officials say the ultimate goal is a 20 percent reduction.

The efforts to make that happen in Kansas vary place to place but among the things they have in common is the involvement of multiple types of medical and social service providers or agencies, not just hospitals.

The reason for that, experts say, is that one of the best ways to reduce readmissions is to make sure that patients get proper follow-up care or attention after they are discharged whether they leave the hospital to live alone at home - where they may receive limited assistance from a variety of outside sources - or a skilled nursing facility where they get more-or-less 24-hour attention.

‘A community problem’

“It’s not just a hospital problem. It’s a community problem and you have to get all the providers together. It’s not easy work. It’s hard work,” said Laura Sanchez, the project director for the Kansas Foundation for Medical Care.

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