Incorporating Medicare Advantage Admissions Into the CMS Hospital-Wide Readmission Measure.

IMPORTANCE

Medicare Advantage (MA) enrollment is rapidly expanding, yet Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) claims-based hospital outcome measures, including readmission rates, have historically included only fee-for-service (FFS) beneficiaries.

OBJECTIVE

To assess the outcomes of incorporating MA data into the CMS claims-based FFS Hospital-Wide All-Cause Unplanned Readmission (HWR) measure.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: This cohort study assessed differences in 30-day unadjusted readmission rates and demographic and risk adjustment variables for MA vs FFS admissions. Inpatient FFS and MA administrative claims data were extracted from the Integrated Data Repository for all admissions for Medicare beneficiaries from July 1, 2018, to June 30, 2019. Measure reliability and risk-standardized readmission rates were calculated for the FFS and MA cohort vs the FFS-only cohort, overall and within specialty subgroups (cardiorespiratory, cardiovascular, medicine, surgery, neurology), then changes in hospital performance quintiles were assessed after adding MA admissions.

MAIN OUTCOME AND MEASURE

Risk-standardized readmission rates.

RESULTS

The cohort included 11 029 470 admissions (4 077 633 [37.0%] MA; 6 044 060 [54.8%] female; mean [SD] age, 77.7 [8.2] years). Unadjusted readmission rates were slightly higher for MA vs FFS admissions (15.7% vs 15.4%), yet comorbidities were generally lower among MA beneficiaries. Test-retest reliability for the FFS and MA cohort was higher than for the FFS-only cohort (0.78 vs 0.73) and signal-to-noise reliability increased in each specialty subgroup. Mean hospital risk-standardized readmission rates were similar for the FFS and MA cohort and FFS-only cohorts (15.5% vs 15.3%); this trend was consistent across the 5 specialty subgroups. After adding MA admissions to the FFS-only HWR measure, 1489 hospitals (33.1%) had their performance quintile ranking changed. As their proportion of MA admissions increased, more hospitals experienced a change in their performance quintile ranking (147 hospitals [16.3%] in the lowest quintile of percentage MA admissions; 408 [45.3%] in the highest). The combined cohort added 63 hospitals eligible for public reporting and more than 4 million admissions to the measure.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE

In this cohort study, adding MA admissions to the HWR measure was associated with improved measure reliability and precision and enabled the inclusion of more hospitals and beneficiaries. After MA admissions were included, 1 in 3 hospitals had their performance quintile changed, with the greatest shifts among hospitals with a high percentage of MA admissions.