Medical Rehab Hospital Inspections Go Unpublicized by Federal Officials
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For-profit hospitals provide most inpatient physical therapy but tend to have worse readmission rates to general hospitals. Medicare doesn’t tell consumers about troubling inspections.
Each year, Medicare punishes hospitals that have high rates of readmissions and high rates of infections and patient injuries. Check out which hospitals have been penalized.
Federal officials said they are penalizing 2,273 hospitals, the fewest since the fiscal year that ended in September 2014. Driving the decline was a change in the formula to compensate for the chaos caused by the covid-19 pandemic.
The pandemic disrupted all sense of normalcy for U.S. hospitals, so federal officials are proposing to pause financial penalties against the facilities and to block public access to key hospital safety data — such as the frequency of falls and sepsis — because of concerns that the data isn’t accurate enough. But consumer advocates are furious about the proposal.
Among the 764 hospitals hit with a 1% reduction in Medicare payments this year for having high numbers of patient infections and avoidable complications are more than three dozen that Medicare also ranks as among the best in the country.
Renowned medical centers are among the quarter of general hospitals that will lose 1% of Medicare payments for one year because their patients have high rates of bedsores, sepsis and other preventable complications.
The penalties are the ninth round of a program created as part of the Affordable Care Act’s broader effort to improve quality and lower costs. The average reduction in federal payments is 0.69%, with 613 hospitals receiving a penalty of 1% or more.
Medicare cut payments for 786 hospitals because of high infection and complication rates. They included a third of the hospitals proclaimed as the nation’s best in one prominent ranking.
Federal officials unveil new ratings for the Affordable Care Act’s marketplace plans. Missouri is one of eight states that has no plans earning at least three stars on a five-star scale.
Starting today, Medicare is keeping half a billion dollars in payments from 83% of general hospitals for having too many patients come back.
The penalties are part of a program set up by the Affordable Care Act to prompt hospitals to pay more attention to safety issues that can lead to injuries, such as falls or hospital-acquired infections.
The federal government is issuing bonuses and penalties to skilled nursing facilities based on how often their patients are readmitted to hospitals within a month of being discharged.
Kaiser Health News gives readers a chance to comment on a recent batch of stories.
Each hospital will have its payments reduced by 1 percent for the year.
Hospitals are jockeying for patients and view the many different quality and safety ratings as a keen way to distinguish their services. But when those ratings nosedive, a hospital may retaliate.
Medicaid covers about two-thirds of nursing home residents, but it pays less than other types of insurance.
This is the first federal website designed to help families choose a hospice, but experts aren’t impressed.
The nonprofit Leapfrog Group shows nearly half of California hospitals got a grade of C, D or F in patient safety measures — an increase from two years ago.
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