New Medicare data shows about 8 percent of hospitals, including some of the most prominent hospitals in the country, have overall readmission rates that exceed the national average, according to a Kaiser Health News report.
The data examines hospital-wide all cause unplanned readmissions for Medicare patients who returned to the hospital within a month of the original visit. That 8 percent of hospitals with above-average all cause readmission rates amounts to 364 hospitals. These institutions are more concentrated in certain areas, too. At least 20 percent of hospitals in Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island had higher rates of patients returning to the hospital when compared with the national average.
Specific cities also had "particularly large numbers of high readmission hospitals," according to the report. Chicago, for instance, is home to 19 hospitals that had above-average readmission rates, including Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Rush University Medical Center and University of Chicago Medical Center. Brooklyn and Philadelphia had 11 and 10 hospitals fitting that bill, respectively.
Cleveland Clinic, Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore were among the more prominent institutions to have above-average readmission rates, according to the data.
Patients at 315 hospitals, or 7 percent of those rated across the country, were readmitted at a lower rate than the national average. Those hospitals include Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco and Intermountain Medical Center in Murray, Utah.
Oklahoma City was home to the most hospitals with lower-than-average readmissions rates, according to the report.
Critics to the measure have said readmission rates do not fully account for the severity of patients' illnesses, as the government's analysis is not refined enough to identify which patients are sicker than others with the same ailment. Others say the measures do not account for hospitals with large proportions of low-income patients who may not have primary care physicians for follow-up care.
KHN has organized the data into a chart with a full list of hospitals that had the best and worst rates for all-cause readmissions.
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