Background: Adequate documentation of patient diagnoses is essential for hospitals to capture the extent of services provided, to submit bills, and ultimately receive payment. These diagnoses are used to calculate hospital performance as part of the Hospital Readmission Reduction Program. Diagnoses taken from medical record documentation are also used to place patients in diagnosis-related groups [...]

Background: Since the implementation of the Hospital Readmission Reduction Program, 30-day readmissions have decreased across the U.S. regardless of hospital teaching intensity. The effect of financial penalties on long term readmission rates has not been studied. Teaching hospitals serve as leaders in medical education, research, innovation, and patient care. Therefore, we examined whether long-term readmission [...]

Background: In 2015, the United States had 25 million people with limited English proficiency (LEP). Most prior studies on disparities in outcomes in hospitalized patients with LEP compared to those with English proficiency were conducted outside the US and focused on outcomes such as hospital length of stay and mortality. There are also Emergency Department [...]