STAAR: improving the reliability of care coordination and reducing hospital readmissions in an academic medical centre.

Setting: Massachusetts General Hospital embarked on a 4-year project to reduce readmissions in a high volume general medicine unit (November 2009 to September 2013).

Objective: To reduce 30-day readmissions to 10% through improved care coordination.

Design: As a before-after study, a total of 7586 patients admitted to the medicine unit during the intervention period included 2620 inpatients meeting high risk for readmission criteria.