Readmission rates may skew hospital quality measurements

Readmission rates were an ineffective measure of a hospital’s quality because they did not take into account readmissions from different hospitals, resulting in a large number of unaccounted for readmissions, according to recent research.“Without different-hospital readmissions data, hospitals cannot track their readmission performance accurately over time, conduct meaningful hospital comparisons, or anticipate rates that could be used to assign financial penalties,” Alisa Khan, MD, MPH, of the division of general pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital, and colleagues wrote. “As increasing attention is directed toward improving quality by reducing readmissions, readmissions should be enumerated accurately — namely, different-hospital readmissions should be included in readmission rate calculations.”