Some hospitals have already shown they can reduce readmissions by taking seemingly simple steps to make sure patients get necessary follow-up care when they go home or to a nursing facility.

At Geisinger Health System, a network in Pennsylvania that has been a leader in improving the quality of hospital care, doctors say they are taking varied approaches to reducing readmissions rates, depending on why the patient was initially hospitalized.

With surgery patients, for example, Geisinger has focused on educating people before they come to the hospital about what they are likely to experience and what they should expect when they leave. The effort could reduce readmission rates by as much as 20 percent, said Dr. Ronald A. Paulus, a senior executive at the health system. Geisinger’s early findings, he said, indicate that if patients “are not ready by the time they come in, it’s too late.”

Geisinger has also found it effective to alert the patients’ doctor about the hospital visit, including a brief summary of the patient’s discharge plan that is sent the doctor within 72 hours of the patient’s departure. That kind of simple step, Dr. Paulus noted, does not require an overhaul of the current system.

Successful measures elsewhere have included working more closely with patients or their caregivers to better manage conditions like diabetes, said Dr. Eric A. Coleman, one of the study’s authors and a policy specialist at the University of Colorado at Denver. Coaching patients to be more diligent about taking their medicine and recognizing when their condition is deteriorating helps people stay out of the hospital, he said.

But Dr. Coleman also said doctors needed to take more responsibility for their patients’ continuing care. “Physicians haven’t really been stepping up to the plate and taking on this accountability,” he said, although he said several professional societies were expected this spring to clarify the doctors’ roles.

Many policy analysts say that insurers like Medicare must change the way they pay hospitals and doctors  rewarding medical providers that help patients get and stay better. Under the current system, reducing the number of returning patients can work against the financial interests of a hospital needing to fill empty beds. About one in four of the nation’s hospitals derive 25 percent of their admissions from return visits by patients, according to the study.

“Reducing admissions in a hospital is quite punitive in today’s environment,” said Dr. Amy E. Boutwell, a policy specialist at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. The institute is working with states including Massachusetts, Washington and Michigan to determine how to change the payment system to encourage hospitals to work more closely with doctors and others to prevent needless round trips.