Harold Miller – Care And Cost

Paul Levy

Posted 10/24/11 on Not Running a Hospital

If you had asked me to predict which topic on this blog would generate acrimony and criticism, I would have been hard-pressed to guess that it would have been hospital readmissions. Recall that I expressed objections to the use of financial penalties to persuade hospitals and doctors to reduce this phenomenon. Also, I cited a paper that showed that the data do not exist to fairly and accurately implement such a penalty scheme. I followed this with a post citing an article suggesting that such penalties might especially adversely affect lower income hospitals. Then, I suggested the kinds of questions that should be answered as we consider any type of public policy change.