In their quest to prepare for the impending changes that will result from the Affordable Care Act, hospitals everywhere are trying to find ways to reduce one of the biggest problems that plagues them: readmissions.

New data from the Dartmouth Atlas Project and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation show that in 2010, the hospital readmission rate in Fort Collins was 15.4 percent and in Greeley stood at 15.7 percent.

These numbers are on the higher end of the scale, which ranged between 11.4 percent and 18.1 percent nationwide.

Hospital readmissions have always been an issue, but health care reforms allow the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to financially penalize hospitals whose Medicare readmission rates are above the national average, which was about 12.4 percent in 2010, according to the Robert Wood Johnson study.

Beginning in October 2014, hospitals with “excessive” readmissions will experience Medicare payment penalties of up to 3 percent.

The Affordable Care Act is going to change how providers are paid, and the legislation emphasizes quality of care over quantity of care, meaning that where providers used to be paid per-visit, now they’ll be paid