As part of one of the larger integrated health systems in Illinois, Endeavor Health’s Edward Hospital was dealing with excess 30-day readmissions for CMS-tracked disease states. In fact, the 30-day CMS readmission penalties had increased for four straight years, reaching over $1.2M in penalties in 2018.

The question Edward Hospital had was, “what is the most effective way to increase treatment success and reduce 30-day readmissions?” Research shows that patients with low medication adherence “had an adjusted 2.54-fold higher odds of readmission compared to those in patients with high adherence.”¹

^‍So, Edward engaged PharmaPoint to design and implement a custom and integrated pharmacy solution, incorporating meds-to-beds, specialty pharmacy and employee service. To better understand how to effectively integrate pharmacy into the hospital’s workflow, PharmaPoint’s operational team was onsite to perform a complete operational analysis of procedures. XchangePoint was deployed and integrated into Edward’s EPIC EHR system to maximize workflow and productivity, as well as track results. Specific targets were set up within XchangePoint for the pharmacy to prioritize, including patients diagnosed with one or more of the six diseases identified by the CMS Hospital Readmission Reduction Program (acute myocardial infarction, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart failure, pneumonia, coronary artery bypass graft and total hip arthroplasty and/or total knee arthroplasty).

Since the start of PharmaPoint/XchangePoint services at Edward Hospital, CMS 30-day readmission penalties have reversed course, saving the hospital over $1M annually in reduced readmission penalties alone. Pharmacy-engaged patients had 64% fewer 30-day readmissions than unengaged patients in same target population.