In March 2010 President Obama signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). The goal was to make health care more affordable, accessible and improve quality, for seniors, families and businesses. One component of the PPACA is the Hospital Readmission Reduction Program (HRRP). The objective of HRRP is to reduce hospital readmissions for selected disease categories where Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) data shows there is considerable room for improvement. This program creates financial incentives for hospitals to reduce cost, implement quality improvement programs and focus on reducing readmissions, within 30 days of discharge, for people admitted with a diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction, heart failure and pneumonia. In 2013 CMS implemented a penalty for hospitals that have higher than average readmission rates in the selected disease …show more content…
It is described as being a “progressive lung disorder characterized by persistent airflow obstruction and chronic respiratory symptoms in response to inhaled cigarette smoke or other irritants or a deficiency of alpha-1-antitrypsin” (Krishnan et al., 2015, p. 70). Acute exacerbations of COPD are common and often leads to patients being hospitalized. The frequency of hospitalization tends to worsen with disease progression. Acute exacerbations of COPD are associated with a decreased quality of life, increased healthcare costs and increased mortality (Marchetti, Criner, & Albert, 2013). In the United States it is estimated that there are approximately 24 million adults with COPD (Pietrangelo, 2015). COPD is one of the leading causes of hospital admissions and one in five COPD patients who are discharged from the hospital will be readmitted within 30 days. In the United States COPD is the third most common cause of death and in 2010 it cost the United States $49.9 billion (Pietrangelo,