Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP)
What is the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP)?
The Hospital Readmission Reduction Program (HRRP) is a purchasing program focusing on the value provided by a hospital. It is overseen by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and encourages hospitals to reduce avoidable readmissions by improving care coordination and communication.
The following conditions and procedures are included in the program:
- Heart failure (HF)
- Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
- Pneumonia
- Acute myocardial infarction (AMI)
- Elective total knee arthroplasty (TKA)
- Elective primary total hip arthroplasty (THA)
- Coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery
HRRP encourages hospitals to improve these areas by incentivizing them through payment reduction based on their performance and the number of readmissions over a rolling performance period.
How does the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) improve healthcare?
By improving communication and care coordination, patients and their caregivers become better informed about their discharge plans. This helps the patients and caregivers to follow their discharge instructions and reduces the number of readmissions.
Since readmission to a hospital directly correlates to the patient’s health, encouraging hospitals to take proactive steps to prevent readmissions leads to better and healthier recovery for the patient. With the incentive to reduce readmissions, hospitals take more care to provide patients with the information they need to continue their care and look after their health once leaving the hospital.