Harvard: Hospitals being penalized for serving disadvantaged patients

In a study published in JAMA International Medicine, researchers from Harvard Medical School’s Department of Health Care Policy found that several social and clinical statistics, not included in Medicare’s calculation of readmission rates, explain nearly half the difference of readmissions between the best and worst performing hospitals. J. Michael McWilliams, associate professor of health care policy, is senior author, and Michael Barnett, research fellow in medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, is lead author of the study.

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