MedPAC Commissioners Discuss Readmissions - Sept. 11, 2012

At the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission’s (MedPAC’s) Sept. 7 meeting, commissioners discussed potential recommendations to improve the Medicare readmissions reduction program. As part of the discussion, they reviewed data that showed that hospitals with higher shares of low-income patients were more likely to have higher readmission rates. The commissioners discussed several possible changes to the program, including controlling for patients’ socioeconomic status, excluding more unrelated and planned readmissions and stratifying by like-hospital comparison groups. They also discussed possibly redirecting resources to support quality improvement efforts at hospitals with a large percentage of low-income patients. However, the commissioners noted that most of these changes would require a legislative fix. MedPAC has indicated that this discussion will continue at future meetings.