Abt Global is evaluating the 10 Hospital Setting Health Care Innovation Award (HCIA), which share the common feature of taking place, at least in part, in a hospital inpatient or emergency department; two of the 10 Awards also include nursing homes and post-acute facilities. These Awards focus on high utilization and high acuity patients. The initiatives range from improving critical (ICU) and emergency department (ED) care, to screening for emerging acute conditions in nursing home patients, to team-based inpatient and outpatient services for high risk patients.

The research team's evaluation used mixed methods to understand the care improvement/redesign processes, information technology, staff training, and other elements of each initiative, as well as impacts on utilization, Medicare and Medicaid spending, and patient and clinician satisfaction with care. This first Annual evaluation report is based on the following source materials:

• Case studies of 10 Awardees
• Core Measures based on analysis of Medicare claims and patient registries supplied by theAwardees
• Regression-based difference-in-differences analysis of Medicare episode spending for the three largest Awardees
• Trend analysis of intervention and comparison groups for six of the smaller programs
• Trend analysis of an intervention group only, during the intervention period, for one program, for which no baseline or comparison group can be estimated using Medicare claims.