Improving transitions of care between the hospital and post-acute care settings is critical to improve quality for the individual and to reduce readmissions. Reducing all-cause hospital readmissions is an area of important concern for all nursing home providers. Provisions of the Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014 put into place a Medicare value-based purchasing program for skilled nursing facilities (SNFs).
This law required the Secretary of HHS to specify an all-cause SNF-to-hospital 30-day readmission measure by 2015, and begin the incentive payments on October 1, 2018. Under the value-based purchasing initiative, CMS will withhold two percent of SNF Medicare payments, starting October 1, 2018, and will redistribute 50-70 percent of the withheld payments based on the incentive distribution. Beginning October 1, 2017, public reporting of the all-cause SNF 30-day hospital readmission measures will be included in Nursing Home Compare.
To assist with care transition analysis, CMS released a mapping tool allowing county-based readmission trend analysis. The “Mapping Medicare Disparities” tool allows users to break down data by state or county, beneficiaries’ demographics, health conditions, and Medicare measures. The tool includes data from CMS enrollment and claims data for the years 2012, 2013 and 2014.