Impact of hospitals’ Referral Region racial and ethnic diversity on 30-day readmission rates of older adults

Background: The Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) began decreasing Medicare payments to hospitals reporting high readmission rates for individuals over 65. Thus, financially incentivizing hospitals to improve quality performance on preventable readmissions. Well-established research indicates that minorities are more frequently readmitted to hospitals, but it is unknown if community diversity is associated with 30-day readmission rates. Objectives: To investigate the association between racial/ethnic diversity and hospitals’ 30-day readmission rates. Methods: We linked the 2017 HRRP, American Hospital Association (AHA) database, Area Health Resource File, US Census Bureau Current Population Survey, and the Dartmouth Atlas HRR dataset to examine 30-day readmission rate for heart failure (HF), pneumonia (PN), acute myocardial infarction (AMI), and hip replacement (HR) surgery of 4,299 hospitals across 306 HRRs. Results: Our findings indicate a statistically significant negative relationship between diversity and 30-day readmission rates for HF, PN, AMI, and HR with a hospital referral region (HRR). Thus, hospitals located in HRRs with diverse populations are more likely to have higher 30-day readmission rates for all conditions under Medicare’s HRRP Conclusion: Better discharge follow-up, interventions, and use of support staff aimed at meeting needs associated with differences in communities and cultures are likely to prove more fruitful than traditional one-size fits all approaches to care.