An Early Look at a Four-State Initiative to Reduce Avoidable Hospital Readmissions

Boutwell AE, Bihrle Johnson M, Rutherford P, et al. An early look at a four-state initiative to reduce avoidable hospital readmissions. Health Affairs. 2011 Jul;30(7):1272-1280.​

Improving transitions in care and reducing avoidable rehospitalizations require engaging providers across organizational and service-line boundaries. The STate Action on Avoidable Rehospitalizations initiative (STAAR) aims to reduce rates of avoidable rehospitalization in Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, and Washington by mobilizing state-level leadership to improve care transitions. Two years into its four-year cycle, the initiative has so far been successful in aligning numerous complementary initiatives within a state, developing statewide rehospitalization data reports, and mobilizing a sizable number of hospitals to work on reducing rehospitalizations.

View article abstract

first last

  • How-to Guide: Improving Transitions from the Hospital to Community Settings to Reduce Avoidable Rehospitalizations
    This How-to Guide is designed to support hospital-based teams and their community partners in codesigning and reliably implementing improved care processes to ensure that patients who have been discharged from the hospital have an ideal transition to the next setting of care, with the related goal of reducing avoidable readmissions.
  • WIHI: Breaking the Cycle of Readmissions
    May 7, 2009 | For a significant number of patients, readmission to the hospital happens all too frequently — for costly reasons that could be better anticipated and avoided. There are ways to reduce readmissions, even in a notoriously fragmented health care system.
  • WIHI: Reducing Readmissions, Restoring Revenues: Making Good Care Count
    October 7, 2010 | This WIHI discusses why it’s critically important to make the financial impact of reducing readmissions a living, breathing, part of your quality agenda. Also discussed is the STAAR initiative, which is working with a courageous group of hospitals that are learning how to analyze their admissions (and readmissions) patterns with some new eyes and new thinking.
Average Content Rating
(0 user)
Please login to rate or comment on this content.
User Comments
Show More Comments...