Fourteen New Mexico hospitals will see their Medicare reimbursement rates fall beginning Oct. 1 as part of the government’s effort to reduce the number of patients readmitted to hospitals within 30 days of their initial discharge, according to the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and Kaiser Health News.
The reimbursements for the New Mexico hospitals will be cut by between .52 percent and .04 percent, according to data released Aug. 2 by CMS and reviewed by Kaiser, a division of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
Nationally, 2,225 hospitals will have their Medicare reimbursements reduced beginning Oct. 1, Kaiser said.
Of those, 18 will receive the full penalty of a 2 percent cut. The 2013 fines will reduce Medicare hospital reimbursements across the U.S. by $227 million, Kaiser said.
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CMS began the penalty program in October 2012 in an effort to cut down on hospital readmissions. In 2012, 10 New Mexico hospitals faced lower reimbursement rates because of their rate of readmissions.
In New Mexico, Gallup Indian Medical Center in Gallup will have the largest reimbursement cut at .52 percent, Kaiser said. It was followed by Mountain View Regional Medical Center in Las Cruces at .39 percent and Lea Regional Hospital in Hobbs at .30 percent. Of the New Mexico facilities assessed penalties, three hospitals — Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque, Memorial Medical Center in Las Cruces and Española Hospital in Española — had the lowest reimbursement cuts assessed at .04 percent each.
In 2012, Medicare provided health care for 50.8 million Americans, CMS said.
Date: Aug 5, 2013