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Affordable Care Act Reduces Hospital Readmissions

One of the numerous goals of the Affordable Care Act was to reduce costly and stressful hospital readmissions—in other words, to get more hospitals to solve patients’ problems the first time around.

A new article in the New England Journal of Medicine says the ACA’s Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program is working.

Rachael B. Zuckerman, M.P.H., Steven H. Sheingold, Ph.D., E. John Orav, Ph.D., Joel Ruhter, M.P.P., M.H.S.A., and Arnold M. Epstein, M.D., "Readmissions, Observation, and the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program," New England Journal of Medicine, 2016.02.24.
Rachael B. Zuckerman, M.P.H., Steven H. Sheingold, Ph.D., E. John Orav, Ph.D., Joel Ruhter, M.P.P., M.H.S.A., and Arnold M. Epstein, M.D., “Readmissions, Observation, and the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program,” New England Journal of Medicine, 2016.02.24.

The researchers establish that this decrease in readmissions isn’t just a bookkeeping trick; hospitals didn’t just reclassify readmissions as “observations”. The ACA said, “Reduce readmissions,” and hospitals reduced readmissions.

That’s just one more success John Thune and Kristi Noem would like to reverse for the sake of their anti-government, anti-social ideology.

2 Comments

  1. Daniel Buresh 2016-02-25 09:41

    This is all tied into reimbursement. If they don’t work on it, their money will go to another hospital.

  2. Mark Winegar 2016-02-25 20:06

    The old carrot and a stick theory works.

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