30-day adjusted pneumonia readmission rate

This measure reports pneumonia patients who are readmitted within 30 days of discharge from the hospital. "Readmission" is when patients who have had a recent hospital stay need to go back into a hospital again. Medicare looks at how many pneumonia patients need to be readmitted to the hospital within 30 days of their discharge. Patients may have been readmitted back to the same hospital or to a different hospital or acute care facility. They may have been readmitted for the same condition as their recent hospital stay, or for a different reason.

The rate of readmission is risk-adjusted, meaning it takes into account how sick patients were before they were admitted to SBUH for pneumonia. There are many reasons why patients are readmitted to SBUH within 30 days of discharge. When a hospital has a lower (better) risk-adjusted rate of readmission, it may mean that the hospital, physicians, and other healthcare professionals are doing a better job treating patients during their first hospital stay and preparing them for discharge and follow-up care after they leave the hospital. Only a portion of our pneumonia patients qualify for this measure. For example, this measure only includes patients covered by Medicare.

This data is for the time period of July 2006 through June 2009. The adjusted 30-day readmission rate for this time period was 19.5%, among 375 Medicare patients hospitalized for pneumonia at SBUH. It is not significantly different then the national rate of 18.3%.

A low score is better than a high score.

	The SBUH 2006-2009 score is for the period July 2006 through June 2009, which is the most recent data available from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
	The New York State average score summarizes the average of health care organizations throughout New York State reporting to the CMS for the period July 2006 through June 2009.
	The average score is for all hospitals in the United States that care for Medicare patients for the time period July 2006 through June 2009. This average takes into account some patients that are sicker then others, making death more likely. This makes it possible to compare different hospitals across the U.S.
	Top 10% score summarizes results from the best 10% of health care organization reporting to CMS for the period July 2006 through June 2009.

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