National Survey of Hospital Strategies to Reduce Heart Failure Readmissions

Abstract

Background—Reducing 30-day heart failure readmission rates is a national priority. Yet, little is known about how hospitals address the problem and whether hospital-based processes of care are associated with reductions in readmission rates. Methods and Results—We surveyed 100 randomly selected hospitals participating in the Get With the Guidelines-Heart Failure quality improvement program regarding common processes of care aimed at reducing readmissions. We grouped processes into 3 domains (ie, inpatient care, discharge and transitional care, and general quality improvement) and scored hospitals on the basis of survey responses using processes selected a priori. We used linear regression to examine associations between these domain scores and 30-day risk-standardized readmission rates. Of the 100 participating sites, 28% were academic centers and 64% were community hospitals. The median readmission rate among participating sites (24.0%; 95% CI, 22.6%–25.7%) was comparable with the national average (24.6%...