Force Therapeutics Reduces 30-Day Readmissions, New Study Shows

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Nov 06, 2024, 09:20 ET

Research demonstrates hospitals using Force Therapeutics care management platform benefit from significantly lower excess readmissions, positioning them for success under TEAM

NEW YORK, Nov. 6, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Force Therapeutics, the leading orthopedic digital care management platform, announced today the release of new research demonstrating how hospitals that use the platform, compared to those that do not, exhibit much lower excess readmission rates. In addition, within a single organization, sites that do use Force Therapeutics were shown to have substantially lower excess readmission rates compared to sites that do not.

This research stemmed from the recent announcement from Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) surrounding the introduction of the Transforming Episode Accountability Model (TEAM), a new mandatory payment model aimed at reducing costs and improving care quality across five episode categories: lower extremity joint replacements (LEJR), surgical hip/femur fracture treatments (SHFFT), coronary artery bypass grafts (CABG), spinal fusions, and major bowel procedures.

Similar to previous bundled payment models, hospitals mandated to participate in TEAM will be required to maintain 30-day episode spending below a certain target price, subject to care quality adjustments. Those who succeed will receive financial incentives, while those who exceed the target price will be required to issue repayments to CMS. Within this context, excess readmissions–which are associated with significant costs–carry an outsized impact on 30-day episode spending, making it absolutely critical that hospitals work to eliminate avoidable readmissions to the best of their abilities.

The research is based on data obtained from the CMS Hospital Readmission Reduction Program (HRRP) for the period of July 2019 through June 2022. In the first part of the study, all hospitals in the HRRP were grouped into 3 categories: Hospitals that used Force throughout the study time frame, hospitals that used Force during part of the study time frame, and hospitals that have never used Force. Hospitals in the first category demonstrated on average an excess readmission rate of 0.98, reflecting less readmissions than expected based on patient population risk factors, while the other two categories saw excess readmission rates of 1.04 and 1.01. The analysis clearly illustrates how hospitals using Force outmatch their counterparts and benefit from substantially lower readmissions, supporting higher quality care for their patients and lowering their Medicare cost expenditures.

In the second part of the study, one large academic health system was selected for a site by site investigation; two of the organization's sites had been using Force, while a third site was not. Among the two sites using Force, excess readmission rates stood at 0.94 and 0.87, while the third site not using Force had an excess readmission rate of 1.25. Once again, this data shows how slight variations in care, even between sites within a single hospital system, can lead to drastically different quality of care results. With Force, care standardization at scale minimizes outliers, enabling hospitals to provide smarter value-based care.

"As the beginning of TEAM in January 2026 approaches, our team and partner care organizations are working to ensure that all the components of delivering high-quality value-based care are in place well ahead of time," said Bronwyn Spira, CEO, Force Therapeutics. "With our platform, hospitals can fully engage their patients to capture important insights remotely, setting the stage for successful post-operative home recoveries and avoiding highly costly and stressful adverse events such as readmissions, despite the increasingly short amount of time these patients spend in the hospital setting."

Force Therapeutics, says Spira, enables hospitals to comprehensively prepare patients for surgery and offer in-depth virtual support at every step of the recovery journey. Beyond minimizing readmissions, this empowers patients and providers to designate clear patient expectations and enable shared decision making, which has been shown to result in higher patient satisfaction and superior functional outcomes.

This is accomplished through gold-standard pre- and post-operative education to prevent complications (such as infections and blood clots); actionable watchlists to provide visibility into patient progress and enable early intervention; remote monitoring and smart alerts to flag signs of challenging recovery journeys; and direct communication tools to quickly address questions and avoid ED visits. The platform also boasts an unparalleled level of patient engagement and long-term PROMs capture rates, supporting regulatory compliance and quality improvement initiatives.

Access the new study here.

About Force Therapeutics
Force Therapeutics is the leading orthopedic digital care management platform, designed to help clinicians effectively manage patients' rehabilitation and recovery remotely using evidence-based care pathways. The platform leverages video and digital connections to directly engage non-operative and operative patients at every step of the care journey. Backed by millions of clinically validated patient data points and insights from more than 70 leading healthcare centers across the country, Force Therapeutics is proven to reduce care variation, lower overall costs, maximize care team efficiency, and improve patient outcomes and satisfaction.

SOURCE Force Therapeutics