Excess days in acute care (EDAC) after hospitalization for heart failure (HF)

The measure assesses days spent in acute care within 30 days of discharge from an inpatient hospitalization for HF to provide a patient-centered assessment of the post-discharge period. This measure is intended to capture the quality of care transitions provided to discharged patients who had a HF hospitalization by collectively measuring a set of adverse acute care outcomes that can occur post-discharge: emergency department (ED) visits, observation stays, and unplanned readmissions at any time during the 30 days post-discharge. In order to aggregate all three events, we measure each in terms of days. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) annually reports the measure for patients who are 65 years or older, are enrolled in Medicare Fee-For-Service (FFS), and are hospitalized in non-federal short-term acute care hospitals.