Medicare Claim–Based National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale to Predict 30-Day Mortality and Hospital Readmission

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) penalizes hospitals for higher than expected 30-day mortality rates using methods without accounting for condition severity risk adjustment. For patients with stroke, CMS claims did not quantify stroke severity until recently, when the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) reporting began. Examine the predictive ability of claim-based NIHSS to predict 30-day mortality and 30-day...