Heart Failure Devices: Raising Roadblocks To Readmission

A new Medicare cost-control program aimed at reducing costly hospital readmissions has heart failure squarely in the cross-hairs, and the consequences could mean hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost Medicare revenue for hospitals that fail to meet the new readmission standards. As a result, providers are scrambling to implement programs to assess and reduce heart failure readmissions, and a growing number of device companies are touting a variety of technologies they believe could help them achieve that goal.

Heart failure is a complicated condition to diagnose and treat and it’s about to get even more complicated, at least for providers. In August, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) formally adopted the fiscal 2012 Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) final rule, which among other things, establishes a new process for tracking and quantifying 30-day hospital readmission rates for three high-cost conditions: heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, and pneumonia. The aim is to identify hospitals with “excess” Medicare readmissions as part of CMS’ new Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program, mandated by the health care reform law.

The ultimate goal is to reduce the cost associated with potentially preventable readmissions, and in order to achieve that goal, CMS will institute an economic incentive, in the form of...

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