Excess days in acute care (EDAC) after hospitalization for pneumonia

This measure assesses days spent in acute care within 30 days of discharge from an inpatient hospitalization for pneumonia, including aspiration pneumonia or for sepsis (not severe sepsis) with a secondary discharge diagnosis of pneumonia coded in the claim as present on admission (POA) and no secondary diagnosis of severe sepsis coded as POA. This measure is intended to capture the quality of care transitions provided to discharge patients hospitalized for an eligible pneumonia condition 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.