All-Cause Admissions and Readmissions Final Report - Spring 2018 Cycle 

Reducing unnecessary hospital admissions and readmissions is a key component of healthcare quality improvement. High rates of readmissions are costly to the healthcare system and can indicate low-quality care during a hospital stay and poor-quality care coordination. NQF currently has 49 endorsed all-cause and condition-specific admissions and readmissions measures addressing numerous settings. As the portfolio grows to include measures that address conditions with smaller patient volumes and as readmission measures are increasingly used in value-based purchasing programs, appropriate testing criteria are needed to ensure that measures accurately reflect healthcare quality. In addition, there is a need to improve quality of care for people with social risk factors while finding ways to better account for the impact of social risk for the purposes of evaluating hospitals and healthcare providers. For this project, the Standing Committee considered the expansion of NQF #1789 Hospital Wide Unplanned All-Cause Readmission for use in accountable care organizations and recommended the measure for endorsement.