Quality of Care

How We Report Unplanned Hospital-Wide Readmissions

The unplanned hospital-wide readmissions measure is based on the number of patients who were unexpectedly admitted to the hospital for any reason within 30 days of being discharged from a hospital stay. This measure does not count hospital readmissions if the patient was originally admitted for certain conditions, such as cancer or a psychiatric diagnosis; if the patient left the hospital against doctor’s advice; or if the readmission was already planned before the patient left the hospital.

Hospitals can often prevent unplanned hospital readmissions by following established best practices for discharge planning, discharge and home care instructions, and coordination of follow-up care. Preventing unplanned hospital-wide readmissions is an important way of measuring the quality of patient care.

Data for this measure comes from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and is one of the 11 readmission measures factored into the Five-Star Overall Hospital Quality Rating. Ratings are based on data for Medicare members aged 65 and older and are risk-adjusted, meaning they account for a patient’s age and how sick they were when they were hospitalized. The unplanned hospital-wide readmissions data on CompareMaine covers the July 1, 2021 – June 30, 2022 reporting period.

CompareMaine uses the hospital’s unplanned hospital-wide readmissions rate compared to the CMS national average. This is comparable for the National Quality Ratings shown on the CMS Care Compare website for the same reporting period.

For more information, download the quality data reported on CompareMaine.