Preview

In the July issue of Health Affairs, Kevin Griffith and coauthors assessed whether hospitals’ thirty-day readmission rates were associated with geographic variations in access to postdischarge care supply.

Using data from 2019-13, the authors found that readmission rates were negatively associated with per capita supply of primary care physicians and licensed nursing home beds.

Further, the population-level supply of certain postdischarge care options varied widely across the US. They report, “This variation was associated with patients’ risk for readmission after a discharge for acute myocardial infarction, heart failure, or pneumonia.”

“Our results suggest potential modifications to the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program to account for local health system characteristics when assigning penalties to hospitals,” Griffith and coauthors conclude.

The Medicare Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program was the focus of a paper in the March 2022 issue of Health Affairs. Sukruth Shashikumar and coauthors examine the three-year impact of stratification in the program on vulnerable populations.

Want to read more? Explore our peer-reviewed journal and unlock the Health Affairs archive dating back to 1981 by becoming a Health Affairs subscriber.

Today in Health Affairs Forefront, Gerald Harmon and coauthors, all presidents or past presidents of leading physician organizations, write about the Behavioral Health Integration Collaborative, a group dedicated to improving quality of care and access to behavioral health services.

On the topic of NIH funding, Chloe Bird estimates that doubling NIH funding for research assessing women’s health would achieve substantial returns on investment.

Currently, more than 70 percent of our content is freely available — and we’d like to keep it that way. With your support, we can continue to keep our digital publication Forefront and podcasts free for everyone.

About Health Affairs

Health Affairs is the leading peer-reviewed journal at the intersection of health, health care, and policy. Published monthly by Project HOPE, the journal is available in print and online. Late-breaking content is also found through healthaffairs.org, Health Affairs Today, and Health Affairs Sunday Update.

Project HOPE is a global health and humanitarian relief organization that places power in the hands of local health care workers to save lives across the globe. Project HOPE has published Health Affairs since 1981.

Copyright © Project HOPE: The People-to-People Health Foundation, Inc.
Health Affairs, 1220 19th Street, NW, Suite 800, Washington, DC 20036, United States

Privacy Policy

To unsubscribe from this email, update your email preferences here.