Quality Measures

How We Report Unplanned Hospital-Wide Readmissions

The Unplanned Hospital-Wide Readmissions measure is based on the number of patients who had an unplanned readmission to the hospital for any reason within 30 days of being released from a hospital stay.

Unplanned hospital readmissions are often preventable. They can be caused by poor discharge planning, failing to make sure patients and their caregivers understand a doctor’s discharge and home care instructions, or poor coordination of follow-up care. Hospitals that provide high quality care can keep patients from returning to the hospital or reduce their stay if they need to come back.

Preventing unplanned hospital-wide readmissions is considered an indicator of the quality of patient care.

Hospital readmissions are not counted 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.

Our data for this measure comes from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). The results are based on data for Medicare members age 65 and older. The scores are risk-adjusted, meaning they account for a patient’s age and how sick they were when they were hospitalized. The data on CompareMaine covers the July 1, 2020 – June 30, 2021 reporting period.

CompareMaine uses the facility’s Unplanned Hospital-Wide Readmissions rate as 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.