TALLAHASSEE, FL – Florida hospitals will be facing more public scrutiny as the state becomes the first in the country to publish data on readmissions that could be potentially prevented.
The state’s Agency for Health Care Administration announced in late June that it would publish information on potentially preventable readmissions at state hospitals on its healthcare consumer Web site, FloridaHealthFinder.gov.
This Web site, in operation for several years, enables state residents to compare facilities by a variety of measures, including lengths of stay, charges, mortality rates and complication and infection rates.
Other states have followed Florida’s lead in the past, and the use of new technology to tease out potentially preventable hospital readmissions could give consumers another way to gauge the quality of providers’ care. Payers might also turn to such measures in pay-for-performance initiatives.
Starting in late June, the Florida Web site is displaying readmission rates on 54 procedures and conditions, said Beth Eastman, administrator for the office of data dissemination for AHCA.
“We developed this reporting as part of our ongoing efforts to provide patients and doctors with more information about the quality of our healthcare system,” said Holly Benson, secretary of ACHA. “Hospital readmissions are often avoidable and costly; by sharing this data, we will help hospitals, providers and especially patients improve the discharge process and the delivery of healthcare.”
The state tracks readmissions to either the same facility or another short-term acute care hospital within 15 days of discharge, based on the original admission for the same or related condition. It can tease out non-related admissions or patients who are receiving ongoing care that requires hospitalization.
Florida’s consumer healthcare Web site went live in 2005, the year after the state Legislature passed legislation to enable it, Eastman said. Changes made since last November have brought more information to the site, which attracts 120,000 visitors per month, she said.
The current initiative is part of an ongoing partnership with the Florida Hospital Association, said Wayne NeSmith, the group’s president.
The FHA has announced a collaboration to reduce unnecessary readmissions, and as of mid-July, nearly 100 hospitals have agreed to participate, said Norbert Goldfield, MD, medical director for 3M Health Information Systems, which supplies the methodology to analyze data and determine if a readmission was preventable.
Being able to identify preventable readmissions is the first step in the process of achieving aligned incentives that could eventually lead to the bundling of hospital and physician payments, a concept that the federal Department of Health and Human Services is starting to explore, Goldfield said. Savings could provide resources for other promising care approaches, such as the medical home.
“There’s a fair amount of discussion on the concept of the medical home, and where is the money going to come from to fund it,” he said. “In large measure, increasing payments for this will come from decreasing avoidable hospital admissions and avoidable readmissions.”