Health Care Leader Action Guide to Reduce Avoidable Readmissions

Osei-Anto A, Joshi M, Audet AM, Berman A, Jencks S, - January 01, 2010

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The Health Research & Educational Trust (HRET) developed a free, downloadable guide for health care leaders to help start the conversation about how to address avoidable hospital readmissions. The guide is designed to serve as a quick, simple resource by outlining four steps:

1. Examine your hospitals current state of readmissions
2. Assess and prioritize your improvement opportunities
3. Develop an action plan of strategies to implement
4. Monitor your hospital's progress

The guide also synthesizes the underlying strategies from the interventions that have been successful in reducing unplanned readmissions. The strategies put forth in this guide could help hospitals reduce avoidable readmissions across three stages of the care continuum: during hospitalization, at discharge, and in the period immediately following discharge.

These strategies are presented with an evaluation of the level of effort required for their implementation. To facilitate their implementation, the strategies are also linked to current national strategies that many hospitals are already involved in such as IHI campaigns, Joint Commission activities, and the American Hospital Association's Hospitals in Pursuit of Excellence. To further its role as a conversation starter, the guide comes complete with web links to the interventions for ease of further research.

The Health Care Leader Action Guide to Reduce Avoidable Readmissions was created after a collaborative meeting with the thought leaders on the subject. It was funded and produced by the Commonwealth Fund, the John A. Hartford Foundation, and the Health Research & Educational Trust (HRET) of the American Hospital Association.