No link between hospital readmissions and death rates, says study

Hospital performance on two Medicare quality measures are not strongly related, and are likely to reflect very different aspects of their clinical care, according to results published by Yale School of Medicine researchers in the Feb. 13 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). "Our findings show that many institutions do well on mortality and readmission and that performance on one does not dictate performance on the other," said the study's lead author, Harlan M. Krumholz , the Harold H. Hines, Jr. Professor of Medicine (cardiology) and professor of investigative medicine and of public health (health policy); director of the Clinical Scholars Program; and director of the Yale-New Haven Hospital Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation. "We found that hospitals can excel in both areas, dispelling prevalent concerns that hospitals that do well on mortality will necessarily do worse on readmission," he added. Measuring and improving hospital quality of care, particularly the outcomes of this care, is an important focus for clinicians and policymakers. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) began publicly reporting hospital 30-day, all-cause, risk-standardized mortality rates for patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI; heart attack) and heart failure (HF) in June 2007, and for pneumonia in 2008.