The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on Sept. 4 launched “dry runs” for the hospital-wide readmission measure and hip and knee replacement complications and readmissions measures to be added to the Hospital Compare website in 2013. Hospitals will have until Oct. 3 to review and download mock hospital-specific reports and other data from the dry run at My QualityNet and submit questions.
In addition, CMS has scheduled a Sept. 11 conference call on the hospital-wide readmission measure, and a Sept. 14 call on the hip and knee replacement measures to provide guidance and answer stakeholder questions. For more on the dry run and calls, see the QualityNet notice.
The American Hospital Association urges hospitals to review and provide feedback on the data to nfoster@aha.org, as the measures are likely to be added to the readmissions penalty provision in the future and the association has raised concerns that other readmissions measures have included unrelated and planned readmissions and failed to account for the impact of community factors that make it more difficult for some hospitals to prevent readmissions. The current dry run excludes a wider array of principal diagnoses for readmission in an effort to address the issue of unrelated and planned readmissions.
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