Idea of the Day: Develop a National Initiative to Reduce Preventable Hospital Admissions and Re-admissions

January 2, 2009

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The new administration should work with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to develop and launch an initiative to reduce preventable hospital admissions and re-admissions, and work with hospitals to help mitigate the financial burden of reaching this goal. Bottom-line financial losses will undoubtedly occur as hospitals demonstrably and measurably reduce patient visits for chronic illness through better home care, outreach, prevention, and coordination of services. The federal government may therefore need to step in for a period of time to protect the bottom-line financial losses they would thereby experience—protecting, for example, their absolute profits, but not their top-line revenues.

For more on this topic, please see:

• The Health Care Delivery System: A Blueprint for Reform