{"main_topic":"health","sub_topic":"cms","topic":"medicare_readmissions","key":"health/cms/medicare_readmissions","version":"1.0.0","year_min":2014,"year_max":2024,"year_gaps":[],"update_frequency":"annual","detail_levels":["counties","states"],"default_detail":"counties","path_template":"health/medicare_readmissions/year={year}/{detail}.parquet","grain":["year","county_fips","tract_geoid","age_bracket"],"title":"Medicare 30-Day Hospital Readmissions (CMS)","summary":"All-cause 30-day hospital readmission rate (readmissions as a share of admissions), Original Medicare, Georgia and its counties.","description":"How often Original Medicare (fee-for-service) beneficiaries in Georgia and each of its 159 counties go back into the hospital within 30 days of leaving it: CMS's all-cause 30-day hospital readmission rate (readmissions divided by acute hospital admissions where the patient was discharged alive) and the number of readmissions, by where beneficiaries live. Statewide, the rate was 17.9% in 2014 and 18.3% in 2024 (26.2% under 65, 17.4% at 65 and over). 2014-2024, from CMS's Medicare Geographic Variation public use file. Medicare Advantage members are not counted (60% of Georgia's beneficiaries with Part A and B in 2024).","explorer":true,"search_aliases":{"en":["hospital readmissions","readmitted patients","back in hospital","repeat hospital stays","hospital bounce-backs","30-day returns","medicare readmission"],"es":["reingresos hospitalarios","readmisiones","volver al hospital","regreso al hospital","reingreso en 30 días","reingresos a hospitales","pacientes de medicare readmitidos"]},"source":"Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Medicare Geographic Variation - by National, State & County, data.cms.gov dataset 6219697b-8f6c-4164-bed4-cd9317c58ebc, 2014-2024 release (2014-2024 Original Medicare Geographic Variation Public Use File.csv)","source_url":"https://data.cms.gov/summary-statistics-on-use-and-payments/medicare-geographic-comparisons/medicare-geographic-variation-by-national-state-county","endpoint":"/api/v1/health/medicare_readmissions","columns":[{"name":"year","type":"integer","role":"year","nullable":false,"label":"Year","short_description":"","description":"Calendar year of the first (index) hospital stay, 2014-2024 (CMS's 2014-2024 release): CMS counts readmissions within 30 days of acute hospital stays during the year.","valid_values":null,"example":2024,"unit":null,"value_min":null,"value_max":null,"null_meaning":null,"key_metric_grain_contributor":false,"metric_component":null},{"name":"county_fips","type":"string","role":"fk_county","nullable":true,"label":"County FIPS","short_description":"","description":"5-digit county FIPS code of the beneficiaries' residence (CMS BENE_GEO_CD); NULL on the Georgia state row. CMS's GA-UNKNOWN (13000) is left out.","valid_values":null,"example":"13121","unit":null,"value_min":null,"value_max":null,"null_meaning":null,"key_metric_grain_contributor":false,"metric_component":null},{"name":"tract_geoid","type":"string","role":"fk_tract","nullable":true,"label":"Tract GEOID","short_description":"","description":"Always NULL: CMS publishes state and county figures only. Kept for the health domain's standard key shape.","valid_values":null,"example":null,"unit":null,"value_min":null,"value_max":null,"null_meaning":null,"key_metric_grain_contributor":false,"metric_component":null},{"name":"age_bracket","type":"string","role":"categorical","nullable":false,"label":"Age Bracket","short_description":"'all' = every beneficiary; 'under_65' / '65_plus' (Georgia only).","description":"Beneficiary age group (CMS BENE_AGE_LVL): 'all' (every age), 'under_65' (entitled by disability or end-stage renal disease) and '65_plus'. CMS publishes the two brackets for Georgia only; county rows are 'all'. The brackets partition 'all': their readmissions add up to it exactly and its rate lies between theirs. Pin 'all' to compare places.","valid_values":["all","under_65","65_plus"],"example":"all","unit":null,"value_min":null,"value_max":null,"null_meaning":null,"key_metric_grain_contributor":true,"metric_component":null},{"name":"readmission_rate","type":"number","role":"metric","nullable":true,"label":"30-Day Readmission Rate","short_description":"Hospital readmissions within 30 days as a share of hospital admissions, all causes (Original Medicare).","description":"CMS's all-cause 30-day hospital readmission rate (ACUTE_HOSP_READMSN_PCT, as published, 4 decimals, 0-1): inpatient readmissions within 30 days of discharge from an acute care hospital stay during the year, divided by the admissions where the beneficiary was discharged alive (CMS methods paper). All-cause: planned and unplanned readmissions both count. Not adjusted for patients' health or risk, and not CMS's hospital-level readmission measure (Care Compare). For the place's Original Medicare (fee-for-service) beneficiaries only. CMS does not publish the admissions, so a rate for several counties cannot be computed here: never average county rates; use the Georgia row for the state.","valid_values":null,"example":0.1833,"unit":"proportion","value_min":null,"value_max":null,"null_meaning":"Suppressed by CMS ('*', with the count and the rate together): the county had too few readmissions to publish (CMS hides figures built on fewer than 11; every published count is at least 11), possibly none. 38 county rows in this release; never Georgia's rows. Never filled in from Georgia minus the other counties. CMS's 'NA' (not produced) never occurs in this column.","key_metric_grain_contributor":false,"metric_component":null},{"name":"num_readmissions","type":"integer","role":"metric","nullable":true,"label":"Readmissions","short_description":"","description":"Inpatient readmissions within 30 days of discharge from an acute care hospital stay during the year, planned or unplanned (CMS ACUTE_HOSP_READMSN_CNT): readmissions, not people (one person can be readmitted more than once). The numerator of readmission_rate; the admissions it divides by are not published. It follows the size of the place's Original Medicare population, which shrank as Medicare Advantage grew: compare places and years by the rate.","valid_values":null,"example":28328,"unit":"count","value_min":null,"value_max":null,"null_meaning":"Suppressed by CMS ('*', with the count and the rate together): the county had too few readmissions to publish (CMS hides figures built on fewer than 11; every published count is at least 11), possibly none. 38 county rows in this release; never Georgia's rows. Never filled in from Georgia minus the other counties. CMS's 'NA' (not produced) never occurs in this column.","key_metric_grain_contributor":false,"metric_component":"numerator"}],"key_metric":"readmission_rate","numeric_filter_columns":["readmission_rate","num_readmissions"],"usage":"Star-schema fact table at state and county grain: state rows have county_fips NULL, county rows join the counties dimension on county_fips; tract_geoid is always NULL. Pin age_bracket = 'all' to compare places (county rows are 'all' only; 'under_65' and '65_plus' are Georgia's own rows, and they add up to 'all'). Compare places and years with readmission_rate, CMS's published share (readmissions / admissions where the patient was discharged alive); num_readmissions is its numerator and follows the size of the Original Medicare population. A combined rate for several counties would be SUM(readmissions) / SUM(admissions), and CMS does not publish the admissions: it cannot be computed from this table, so never average or add county rates; for Georgia use the state row. The counties' num_readmissions never add up to more than Georgia's (they leave out suppressed counties and beneficiaries CMS places in no county): never fill a suppressed county in as Georgia minus the others. Read directly with DuckDB over Parquet.","limitations":"Original Medicare (fee-for-service) only: beneficiaries in Original Medicare Parts A and B, counted for each month entitled, not all enrollees. In 2024 those beneficiaries were 35% of Georgia's Medicare beneficiaries and 20-49% of each county's (Medicare Advantage up to 76%, Clayton County), so county figures can describe a fee-for-service minority. All-cause (planned or not), not risk-adjusted. Counts fall as Original Medicare shrinks: compare years by the rate. Small counties may be NULL. readmission_rate is CMS's figure: readmissions within 30 days of discharge from an acute care hospital stay divided by the admissions where the patient was discharged alive. CMS does not publish those admissions, so no combined rate for several counties can be computed here (never average county rates). num_readmissions counts readmissions, not people. Counted by where beneficiaries live, not where they were treated: these are not CMS's hospital readmission measures (Care Compare, the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program), which count only unplanned readmissions, are risk-adjusted and are reported by hospital, for specific conditions or hospital-wide. Georgia's Original Medicare population shrank as Medicare Advantage grew (948,452 beneficiaries in 2014, 716,088 in 2024; under 65, 185,914 and 66,491), so a change over time can reflect who remains in Original Medicare as well as care; the readmission counts fall with it, so compare years by the rate. Beneficiaries under 65 (entitled by disability or end-stage renal disease) are readmitted more often: in 2024, 26.2% under 65 and 17.4% at 65 and over in Georgia. age_bracket 'under_65' and '65_plus' exist for Georgia only; county rows are 'all'. Who is covered: CMS counts the hospital stays of beneficiaries with Part A, Part B and Original Medicare for every month they were entitled, new enrollees and people who died during the year included; anyone in Medicare Advantage at any point in the year, or with Part A or Part B alone, is left out. CMS suppresses figures built on fewer than 11 beneficiaries or service users ('*'); they are NULL here and never filled in from other figures. CMS suppresses the count and the rate together where a county had too few readmissions (every published count is at least 11): 38 county rows in this release, in 11 small counties (most often Taliaferro in 7 years, Chattahoochee 6, Webster 5); Georgia's rows are never suppressed. CMS's GA-UNKNOWN row (13000), beneficiaries placed in no county, is fully suppressed and left out. Georgia's row is CMS's own figure, not a sum of the county rows: it also counts the handful of beneficiaries CMS places in no county (GA-UNKNOWN), so the 159 counties need not add up to it exactly. The county readmission counts also leave out suppressed counties, so they never add up to more than Georgia's. From CMS's 2014-2024 release (file updated 2026-04-29); each release restates earlier years, so the figures here are replaced when the data is refreshed. tract_geoid is always NULL.","null_semantics":{"suppressed_to_null":true,"zero_is_real":true},"available_years":[2014,2015,2016,2017,2018,2019,2020,2021,2022,2023,2024],"schema_hash":"d96c0db2527e1c93eb7781393e450c77afd103d8bcc429872889f577b83f1982","tags":["health","centers for medicare & medicaid services","medicare_readmissions"],"granularity_description":"One row per year, county_fips, tract_geoid, age_bracket (geography columns are NULL at higher aggregation levels).","example_queries":[{"description":"Latest year (2024), counties detail","query":"SELECT * FROM medicare_readmissions WHERE year = 2024 LIMIT 100"},{"description":"Filter by age_bracket = all","query":"SELECT * FROM medicare_readmissions WHERE age_bracket = 'all' AND year = 2024 LIMIT 100"}],"foreign_keys":[{"column":"county_fips","target_object":"counties","target_columns":["county_fips"],"attribute_columns_added":["county_name"],"scope":"global"},{"column":"tract_geoid","target_object":"tracts","target_columns":["tract_geoid"],"attribute_columns_added":["tract_name"],"scope":"global"}],"filters":[{"param":"year","kind":"year_exact","type":"integer","multi_value":false,"enum_enforced":false,"values":null},{"param":"year_min","kind":"year_range","type":"integer","multi_value":false,"enum_enforced":false,"values":null},{"param":"year_max","kind":"year_range","type":"integer","multi_value":false,"enum_enforced":false,"values":null},{"param":"detail","kind":"detail","type":"string","multi_value":false,"enum_enforced":true,"values":["counties","states"],"default":"counties"},{"param":"county_fips","kind":"foreign_key","column":"county_fips","type":"string","multi_value":true,"enum_enforced":false,"values":null},{"param":"tract_geoid","kind":"foreign_key","column":"tract_geoid","type":"string","multi_value":true,"enum_enforced":false,"values":null},{"param":"age_bracket","kind":"categorical","column":"age_bracket","type":"string","multi_value":true,"enum_enforced":true,"values":["all","under_65","65_plus"],"has_total":true,"total_value":"all","requires_single_value":false,"nullable":false,"null_filter_token":null}],"filter_hints":[],"non_additive":[],"partitions":[],"value_implications":[],"year_meaning":null,"pooled_rates":[],"series_breaks":[],"year_window":null,"pooled_min_count":null,"values_endpoint":"/api/v1/health/medicare_readmissions/values"}