Ever since the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) decided to penalize hospitals financially for avoidable readmission of patients within 30 days of their discharge, health systems have been coming up with inventive ways to keep patients out of the hospital while also trying to bring in more revenue. Most of these approaches make sense. They've created population health management programs that analyze patient data to spot those at high risk for readmission, for instance, and then offer preventive measures to those patients. They've created care-coordination systems to make sure discharged patients arrive safely at their next destination, whether it be their home, a rehabilitation unit, or a nursing facility.
