Rethinking Readmission as a Hospital Quality Metric

Rethinking Readmission as a Hospital Quality Metric: Insurance Coverage and Latent Health Status Affect Patients’ Rate of Readmission

In this research, we focus on the drivers of readmission rates of CHF patients and observe that hospital readmission rates are determined not only by the quality of care, but also by non-clinical factors such as patient unobserved health status and patient insurance coverage. Our quasi-experimental results indicate that privately insured and self-pay patients experience higher likelihood of readmission after enrolling in Medicare. We also develop and estimate a hidden Markov model (HMM) to study the effect of unobserved health status, with which we reveal its significant impact on patient readmission risk.

Poster Number: 7