News: Hundreds of hospitals hit annually with Medicare’s safety penalties
This year, 751 hospitals will be hit with a payment reduction from Medicare due to high rates of patient injuries, according to Kaiser Health News. These hospitals will lose 1% of their Medicare payments over fiscal year (FY) 2018.
More than half of the hospitals on this year’s list were also penalized last year, according to Kaiser Health News. This has raised concerns over the effectiveness of the program as well, according to NPR News, suggesting that the most diligent hospitals reporting infections and injuries will appear to have higher incidents of HACs.
CMS began payment reductions in October 2014 for the hospitals that rank in the worst-performing quartile of hospitals with respect to hospital acquired conditions (HAC). For FY 2018, hospitals with a total HAC score greater than the 75th percentile of the total HAC score distribution will be subject to a payment reduction, according to CMS.
Hospitals in different states will feel the effects differently this year, according to NPR News. Specifically, Connecticut and Delaware received the hardest sanctions with half of the hospitals receiving penalties.
In previous years, teaching hospitals have received the heaviest sanctions, and the trend continued to a lesser extent, according to Kaiser Health News, with 115 academic medical centers penalized.
But, according to some, the penalties aren’t without their benefits. “I have seen with my own eyes the improvement,” Amy Boutwell, MD, MPP, a quality-improvement consultant in Massachusetts told NPR News. “I hear hospitals say straight up, ‘We don’t want to be in the lowest quartile; we want to get out of the penalty zone.’”
Editor’s note: To see a searchable list of all 751 hospitals penalized this year, click here. To read more about CMS’ various quality reporting programs, read the March/April 2017 edition of the CDI Journal.