Obamacare Working? Readmission Rates Declined in 2012

It’s too early to say for sure, but the penalties on hospitals for higher-than-average readmission rates under healthcare reform may be working as those numbers “declined significantly” last year.

For the past five years the readmission rate has held steady at 19 percent, but last year dipped to 18.4 percent, reports the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Office of Information Products & Data Analytics.

Curbing hospital readmissions is one of the major metrics for success in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and hospitals with higher-than-average readmission rates have a percentage of their Medicare reimbursements docked. While the drop in readmissions is encouraging news, it is far too early to know if this represents a trend or is a singular aberration.

“This study finds that the drop in rates from 2011 to 2012 was statistically significant and not driven by an influx of younger beneficiaries, but the underlying causes of the decline are not yet clear,” according to a press release on the study.