Preventing readmissions is a hot topic these days. CMS has imposed new financial penalties for organizations that don't successfully prevent 30-day readmissions for patients with certain medical conditions, and organizations are always looking for new strategies to ensure patients are successfully able to move to the next level of care.
In an effort to make physicians more accountable for proper documentation, CMS has been doing the transmittal shuffle as of late--and the process may have you thoroughly confused.
In the accountable care organization era, controlling costs and maximizing the efficiency of care has become a priority for many organizations, particularly when it comes to patients with high-cost, complex needs. The question is: How can organizations save money without sacrificing the quality of care or increasing avoidable readmissions?
If the 2-midnight rule keeps you up at night, it might help to add some PEPPER to your processes. CMS recently updated PEPPER, otherwise known as the Program for Evaluating Payment Patterns Electronic Report, to provide hospitals with insight into how well they're doing with 2-midnight rule compliance.
