More than half of Michigan hospitals — including two in Lansing — are being penalized by the government for having too many Medicare patients readmitted within 30 days of being treated, according to federal records released this month.
But the 58 percent of eligible hospitals losing a small amount of their Medicare funding in the state is better than the two-thirds of hospitals nationwide, according to an analysis by Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation health policy research and communication group.
And the share of Medicare payments that the Lansing hospitals are losing is much less than the national average.
The penalties were created as a way to improve care and reduce the costs of expensive hospital stays under the 2010 health care reform law.
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The Lansing area started working on the problem in 2008 as a test site for a federally funded effort to find ways to reduce readmission rates.
The state entity that contracts with the federal government to improve care to Medicare beneficiaries brought together hospitals, nursing facilities, home health care companies, the county health department and others to identify the major reasons for readmissions and to figure out ways to communicate better and coordinate care as patients moved between facilities or back home.
“If there is one takeaway, it’s that working together as a community is really the key to solving this issue,” said Jacqueline Rosenblatt, senior director for corporate growth and development at MPRO, the government’s Medicare quality contractor in Michigan.
While involving the entire health care community may be crucial, it’s the hospitals that are being held accountable under the Affordable Care Act’s penalty program.
Date: Sep. 1, 2013