Reducing 30-Day Hospital Readmissions Through Interprofessional Collaboration/Multidisciplinary Team-Based Care Approach: A Benchmark Project

Hospital readmissions are a costly burden that hospitals often must sustain because of current reimbursement policies. The Hospital Readmission Reduction Program (HRRP), a value-based purchasing program, was established to reduce or penalize payment to hospitals for excessive readmissions (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, 2020). Lower financial payments by payors often have a negative impact on a hospital’s overall performance through the inability to purchase new and up to date equipment and materials, budget cuts, downsizing of personnel and departments, amongst all other things. Auerbach et al. (2016) estimate that approximately one-quarter or 26.9% of hospital readmissions were preventable. The purpose of the PICOT question “In patients being discharged from the hospital (P), how does a multidisciplinary team or interprofessional collaboration approach (I) compared to a PCP follow-up visit only approach (C) affect patients’ readmission to a hospital (O) within 30 days of discharge? (T)” is to provide a possible avenue to lower hospital readmissions by looking for positive associations between a multidisciplinary team or interprofessional collaboration approach to patient care and rehospitalization