Anxious to avoid ACA-defined financial penalties for excessive hospital readmissions, healthcare organizations have intensified efforts to tighten coordination of care and management of care transitions for Medicare beneficiaries at risk of rehospitalization.

A reduction in Medicare spending on avoidable hospital readmissions, pegged at an estimated $12 billion, is a top CMS priority.

Heightened industry activity in this area is documented in 2012 Healthcare Benchmarks: Reducing Hospital Readmissions, which identifies the key strategies, challenges, target populations and health conditions of 119 healthcare organizations to reduce avoidable rehospitalizations.

This 48-page report, now in its third year, is designed to meet business and planning needs of hospitals, health plans, managed care organizations, physician practices and others by providing critical benchmarks that show how the industry is working to reduce rehospitalizations, particularly for the CMS target conditions of heart failure, myocardial infarction and pneumonia.

Download the executive summary of "2012 Healthcare Benchmarks: Reducing Hospital Readmissions."

This market research on current and planned programs to reduce readmissions is supported by more than 40 charts and graphs assembled from responses to HIN's third annual survey on Reducing Hospital Readmissions conducted in February 2012.

New in the 2012 edition:

• Comparative 2010-over-2012 data on key activities, including a significant trend in the use of home visits to reduce readmissions, the role of the RN in the readmissions program, and the preparation of advance care plans at discharge;
• Sector-specific data from hospitals and health plans on programs, processes and outcomes; and
• Reactions to increased payor scrutiny of 30-day readmissions and ACA-mandated posting of hospital readmission rates.

This report provides expanded data on:

• Current and planned readmission reduction programs;
• Populations and conditions targeted by readmission reduction efforts;
• Tools and strategies to identify patients most at risk for returning to the hospital;
• Strategies, protocols and policies to help prevent hospital readmissions in vulnerable populations;
• The top tasks performed at hospital discharge to minimize the chances of a patient returning to the hospital as well as other strategies to strengthen the hospital discharge process;
• Roles and responsibilities in readmission avoidance program administration;
• The latest metrics on reimbursement trends for 30-day readmission rates;
• Overcoming barriers to reducing readmissions and to the launching of programs in this area;
• The impact of hospital readmission management programs on healthcare utilization, member/patient satisfaction and ROI;
• The complete February 2012 Reducing Hospital Readmissions survey tool;

Download the executive summary of "2012 Healthcare Benchmarks: Reducing Hospital Readmissions."

To avoid leaving reimbursement dollars on the table, healthcare organizations will benefit from a review of these metrics from their peers to evaluate and compare program performance and utilization data.

The 50-page 2012 Healthcare Benchmarks: Reducing Hospital Readmissions is part of the HIN Healthcare Benchmarking series, which provides a continuous stream of qualitative data on industry trends to empower healthcare companies to assess strengths, weaknesses and opportunities to improve by comparing organizational performance to reported metrics.