It has long been acknowledged that unplanned re-hospitalizations cost the U.S. health care system billions of dollars each year. Researchers at Boston University Medical Center have been working on a project to reduce readmission rates by improving and standardizing the hospital discharge process. Thanks in part to the intersection of national policy with their clinical goals, the researchers’ work has begun to attract widespread interest. The initiative, called Project Re-Engineered Discharge (RED), is still in a randomized control trial phase, but initial results show that using the RED protocol may significantly reduce readmission rates, says Brian Jack, MD, the project’s principal investigator. Jack is an associate professor and vice chair for academic affairs in the department of family medicine at Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center.