Hospital readmissions: measuring for improvement, accountability, and patients.

The Commonwealth Fund and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement convened 15 experts in May 2013 to help address the current controversy over the measurement of hospital readmissions. Experts agreed that Medicare should, through payment and other means, be encouraging greater coordination of care, improvement in care transitions, and mitigation of risks that leave patients vulnerable to readmission. While the current readmissions metric is...