An experimental Medicare program has helped nursing homes reduce the frequency with which their residents are admitted to hospitals.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Initiative to Reduce Avoidable Hospitalizations Among Nursing Facility Residents has reduced avoidable hospitalizations among nursing facility residents 17 percent in the program’s three years.
143 nursing homes in seven states participated in the program, which employed third-party vendors, known as enhanced care and coordination providers, to provide education to nursing facility staff.
Hospitals, too, can benefit from the program because it may help reduce avoidable hospital readmissions for which they are penalized financially by Medicare.
In the second phase of the program, which began this year, nursing homes are paid Medicare rates to serve patients with any of six medical conditions for which those individuals might otherwise be hospitalized.
Learn more about the program and the results it has produced in this final report on the program’s first three years.