A recent OIG report, "Medicare Nursing Home Resident Hospitalization Rates Merit Additional Monitoring,” examines the extent to which Medicare nursing home residents are hospitalized. The OIG found that in FY 2011, nursing homes transferred one quarter of their Medicare residents to hospitals for inpatient admissions in FY 2011, and Medicare spent $14.3 billion on these hospitalizations. Septicemia was the most common condition requiring the hospitalization of nursing home residents, and nursing homes located in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma had the highest annual rates of resident hospitalizations. The OIG concludes that the higher-than-average resident hospitalization rates of some nursing homes in FY 2011 suggest that some hospitalizations could have been avoided through better nursing home care. The OIG recommends that CMS develop a quality measure that describes nursing home resident hospitalization rates and assess this measure during surveys of nursing homes. CMS concurs with OIG’s recommendations, and is already working on developing a hospitalization measure for all nursing home residents and a re-hospitalization measure for Medicare skilled nursing facility residents. CMS also concurs in adding these measurers to the quality measures surveyors review.