Cardiology fellow Dr. Rohan Khera recently received the Young Investigator Award in Outcomes Research from the American College of Cardiology for an extensive analysis of U.S. hospitals’ rates of readmissions for conditions like heart attacks, heart failure, and pneumonia.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) penalizes hospitals that have higher than expected rates of rehospitalization. The investigation, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, arose from concerns that hospitals might be working around these penalties by delaying subsequent hospitalizations.

However, Dr. Khera, working with colleagues from Yale School of Medicine, Yale School of Public Health, and Yale New Haven Hospital, demonstrated the effectiveness and safety of patients in the current standards.

In recent years, fewer Medicare beneficiaries discharged from U.S. hospitals after heart attacks, heart failure, and pneumonia have been readmitted, the researchers wrote. There was no evidence for an unexpected increase in readmissions beyond 30 days, or any unexpected excess mortality.

Dr. Khera, the study’s first author, said the analysis should reassure patients that the CMS’ landmark initiative – the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) – did not drive health care institutions to avoid required hospitalizations. The HRRP, which is set to expand to a broader range of hospital conditions, is attaining its goal of spurring the development of systems to better deliver transitions of care to patients being discharged from the hospital, he said.

We evaluated daily rates of readmissions and mortality across more than 3,200 hospitals, Dr. Khera said. This analysis did not detect any inflections, arguing for the safety of the program and that hospitals did not try to game the readmission and mortality measures by deferments.