Dive Brief:
- During the second round of penalties for hospital readmissions, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is fining 2,225 hospitals $227 million.
- More than 1,100 hospitals were able to keep readmission low enough to avoid paying fines. Among those that paid, the average decreased .05% from the previous year. Hospitals that were most likely to receive fines tended to be safety nets—77% of which received fines as opposed to 36% of organizations with the least amount of low-income patients.
- This year, Medicare is increasing its maximum penalty to 3% for all patient stays. CMS is also considering adding more conditions, like knee replacements, to those analyzed.
Dive Insight:
The penalties were put in place by the Affordable Care Act and are based on patients with a heart attack, heart failure or pneumonia that were readmitted to a hospital within 30 days of discharge. If a hospital had more readmissions than Medicare predicted, the organization could lose up to 2% of its Medicare reimbursement.
With penalties increasing the number of conditions being considered for readmission fines, hospitals will be forced to attend to this issue or lose precious funds. Because money is at stake, organizations across the country have been focusing on ways to reduce readmissions for various conditions. The numbers show that when hospitals aim to make changes, they can be successful.
Date: August 13, 2014