Health economics
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To incentivize hospitals to provide better quality care at a lower cost, the Affordable Care Act of 2010 included the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP), which reduces payments to hospitals with excess 30-day readmissions for Medicare patients treated for certain conditions. We use triple difference estimation to identify the HRRP's effects in Virginia hospitals; this method estimates the difference in changes in readmission over time between patients targeted by the policy and a comparison group of patients and then compares those difference-in-differences estimates in patients treated at hospitals with readmission rates above the national average (i.e., those at risk for penalties) and patients treated at hospitals with readmission rates below or equal to the national average (those not at risk). ⋯ Future research on the specific mechanisms behind reduced AMI readmissions should focus on actions by healthcare providers once the patient has left the hospital. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.