Preventable Hospital Readmission Initiative

Preventable hospital readmissions are dangerous to patients, costly, and reflect poor quality of care.  The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services has challenged hospitals across the country to reduce preventable readmissions by 20 percent.  Although hospitals throughout the greater New York area are engaged in a range of activities to prevent readmissions, hospital staffs have expressed a need for resources and support to help them conduct robust efforts to analyze the extent of the problem and implement strategies to reduce readmissions.  To address this need and stimulate further action, the United Hospital Fund has launched the Preventable Hospital Readmission Initiative (PHRI). 

In the initiative's first phase, the Fund has awarded planning grants to seven hospitals to enable them to study targeted groups of readmitted patients through analysis of administrative data, chart reviews, and interviews with patients, their family caregivers, and their community-based physicians.  Staff from the Fund and the Greater New York Hospital Association (GNYHA) will develop a standardized interview template for use with patients and their family caregivers as well as a chart abstraction tool.

The Fund has awarded a total of $140,000 in planning grants to:

• The Brooklyn Hospital Center
• Lenox Hill Hospital
• Mount Sinai Medical Center 
• New York Methodist Hospital
• St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx
• St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital Center, and
• Staten Island University Hospital

Each hospital has selected a target population for analysis.  These populations include congestive heart failure patients, patients with acute myocardial infarction and pneumonia, patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and patients who have both diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

In the project's second phase, participating hospitals will have the opportunity to submit proposals on implementing specific interventions shaped by information gained during the project's first phase.    The Fund expects to award at least four grants, of up to $55,000 each, for a period of nine months to a year in early 2012.

Project contact:  Hillary Jalon