Background: Medicare Advantage (MA) plans have strong incentives to reduce potentially wasteful healthcare, including costly acute care visits for ambulatory care-sensitive conditions (ACSC) [1-4]. It is unknown, however, whether MA plans lower acute care use relative to Traditional Medicare (TM) or instead shift patients from hospitalizations towards observation stays and emergency department (ED) direct discharges. […]

Background: Equity is an essential domain of healthcare quality [1] but is rarely addressed within quality measurement programs. Quality initiatives, without explicit equity focus, may exacerbate underlying disparities.[2]To address this historic lack of focus on equity, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS) now provides confidential reports to hospitals on two disparity metrics for Medicare […]

Background: Minority and low-income populations are more likely to be hospitalized and/or re-hospitalized for acute asthma, a key indicator of poorly controlled disease. While hospitals have attempted to improve asthma care by implementing individual-level care interventions, inequities persist during inpatient stays and in intervention delivery. Little is known about the impact of “bundled” systems-level interventions […]