The Comonwealth Fund has handed Massachusetts a rank of Eighth in its new report Aiming Higher: Results from a State Scorecard on Health System Performance. Generally the areas in which our state scored the lowest are premium costs for employer sponsored insurance and "Avoidable Hospital Use and Costs." In the area of readmissions to hospitals during a home health episode. we were ranked 35, with a rate of 29.0, compared to a national rate of 26.9. Clearly this is not a problem specific to home care as in the category of overall readmisions for Medicare, 40 states did better than us.
Medicare has adopted reducing acute care hospital (ACH) admission from home care
as its national quality improvement goal for 2007. The goal for the campaign is to reduce the average ACH rate across all campaign participant home health agencies by a 5% relative improvement from baseline to the end of the campaign. The Home Care Alliance is a designated partner (a LANE) to the federal Medicare program in this QI effort and more than 75 local agencies have signed up as committed partners.
as its national quality improvement goal for 2007. The goal for the campaign is to reduce the average ACH rate across all campaign participant home health agencies by a 5% relative improvement from baseline to the end of the campaign. The Home Care Alliance is a designated partner (a LANE) to the federal Medicare program in this QI effort and more than 75 local agencies have signed up as committed partners. Progress will be tracked through February 2008 and publicly reported in May 2008.
