Emergency room visits and hospital readmissions of Medicare home-health beneficiaries have remained unchanged since CMS implemented the prospective payment system to slow home-health spending in 2000, according to a recent report by the Office of the Inspector General. The report was prompted because of the disincentive created by PPS to visit home-health patients. But after evaluating Medicare data from 2000 through 2003, the OIG report found that Medicare patients’ readmission rates during that period remained steady at 47%, while emergency room visits slightly increased from 29% to 30%.
