safety-net hospitals and the Medicare readmissions reduction program

Medicare’s hospital readmissions reduction program will move in a new direction beginning in FY 2019 after Congress directed the Centers of Medicare & Medicaid Services to compare hospitals’ performance on readmissions to similar hospitals instead of to all hospitals. The policy change, driven by a belief that safety-net hospitals were harmed by the program and excessive penalties because their patients are more challenging to serve, results in all hospitals being divided into peer groups based on the proportion of low-income patients they serve.  The readmissions performance of hospitals is then compared only to other hospitals within each peer group. As [...]