30-Day Readmission, Mortality Rates Updated

A major update to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' Hospital Compare website refreshes data for 30-day readmission and mortality rates.

Eight hospitals from California to Puerto Rico and New York showed up as "worse than" the national average in 30-day readmission rates for all three disease categories—pneumonia, heart attack, and heart failure—in the latest update of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services website, Hospital Compare.

The three-year performance period ending June 30, 2011 is the same one the agency is using to determine which hospitals will receive negative payment adjustments of up to 1% of their Medicare DRG reimbursement starting with discharges on October 1. Hospitals that will ultimately be penalized are not necessarily the ones listed here, CMS officials said.

30-Day Readmission Rates

The eight hospitals listed as worse than the national average for 30-day readmission rates in all three disease categories are:

1. Beth Israel Deaconess in Boston, MA

2. Florida Hospital, Orlando, FL

3. Franciscan St. James Health, Olympia Fields, IL

4. Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, MI

5. Mount Sinai Hospital, NY, NY

6. Olympia Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA

7. Tampa VA Medical Center, Tampa, FL

8. San Juan VA Medical Center, San Juan, Puerto Rico

The Hospital Compare site also lists two hospitals with better than national averages for 30-day readmission rates in all three disease categories: Citrus Memorial Hospital, in Inverness, FL and Sarasota Memorial Hospital, in Sarasota, FL.

Mortality Rates

While 21 hospitals are listed as having mortality rates that were "better than" national averages in all three disease categories, no hospital was listed as having "worse than" national averages for 30-day mortality rates in all three disease categories.

These are the hospitals listed "better than" the national average for 30-day mortality rates:

1. Abbott Northwestern Hospital, Minneapolis, MN

2. Alexian Brothers Medical Center, Elk Grove, IL

3. Aurora St. Lukes Medical Center, Milwaukee, WI

4. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA

5. Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA

6. Englewood Hospital, Englewood, NJ

7. Glendale Adventist Medical Center, Glendale, CA

8. Hackensack University Medical Center, Hackensack, NJ

9. Hazleton General Hospital, Hazleton, PA

10. Lehigh Valley Hospital, Allentown, PA

11. Mayo Clinic Hospital, Phoenix, AZ

12. Methodist Hospital, Houston, TX

13. Missouri Baptist Medical Center, Town and Country, MO

14. Mount Sinai Medical Center, Miami Beach, FL

15. NY Presbyterian Hospital, NY, NY

16. NYU Langone Hospitals Center, NY, NY

17. Olympia Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA

18. Provena St. Joseph Medical Center, Joliet, IL

19. Providence Hospital and Medical Center, Southfield, MI

20. St. Joseph's Hospital, Chicago, IL

21. Yale-New Haven Hospital, New Haven, CT

Interestingly, two hospitals that scored "worse than" national average in 30-day readmission rates are "better than" national average in 30-day mortality: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in Boston, MA and Olympia Medical Center, in Los Angeles, CA.

Hospitals scoring "better than" the national average for 30-day readmission rates in one or two disease categories totaled 328.

Hospital rankings for 30-day readmissions and mortality categories may be compared with listings posted on Hospital Compare 11 months ago, when the three-year performance period began and ended one year earlier.

See Also:

CMS Updates Hospital Compare Website