The Hospital Readmission Reduction Program (HRRP), established in 2010, placed significant financial penalties on hospitals with rates of readmission that were higher than expected for 3 targeted medical conditions.¹ Under the program, a hospital’s readmission rate is adjusted based on patients’ coded severity of illness. Although these adjustments reflect an effort from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to avoid unfairly penalizing hospitals caring for patients with higher severity of illness, hospitals can improve their calculated rates of readmission by increasing their coded level of severity. It is unknown whether changes in coded severity of illness explain the previously described reductions in readmissions after implementation of the HRRP.^1,2

医院减少再入院计划（HRRP）成立于2010年，对医院的重大经济处罚是其再入院率高于3种有针对性的医疗状况的预期。¹根据该计划，医院会根据患者编码的疾病严重程度调整住院率。尽管这些调整反映了美国医疗保险和医疗补助服务中心的努力，以避免不公平地惩罚照料疾病严重程度较高的患者的医院，但是医院可以通过提高其严重程度的编码水平来提高其再入院率。尚不明确疾病严重程度的变化是否可以解释上述实施HRRP后再入院率的下降。^{1 ，2}