One of the initiatives part of Obamacare was improving quality especially in hospitals treating Medicare patients. It’s pretty hard to be opposed to such a goal … unless perhaps you run a hospital and must deal with the myriad of rules, regulations, questionable measures, penalties and massive bureaucracy of CMS. Some of the quality measures and possible penalties include the period of time before and after the patient is in the hospital. In any case, it’s a daunting task whether you are on the provider or regulator side.
We we all better hope they both know what they are doing because it’s our money … and our health, sometimes our life😳
Medicare is giving bonuses to a majority of hospitals that it graded on quality, but many of those rewards will be wiped out by penalties the government has issued for other shortcomings, federal data show.
As required by the 2010 health law, the government is taking performance into account when paying hospitals, one of the biggest changes in Medicare’s 50-year-history. This year 1,700 hospitals – 55 percent of those graded – earned higher payments for providing comparatively good care in the federal government’s most comprehensive review of quality. The government measured criteria such as patient satisfaction, lower death rates and how much patients cost Medicare. This incentive program, known as value-based purchasing, led to penalties for 1,360 hospitals.
However, fewer than 800 of the 1,700 hospitals that earned bonuses from this one program will actually receive extra money, according to a Kaiser Health News analysis. That’s because the others are being penalized through two other Medicares quality programs: one punishes hospitals for having too many patients readmitted for follow-up care and the other lowers payments to hospitals where too many patients developed infections during their stays or got hurt in other ways.
When all these incentive programs are combined, the average bonus for large hospitals — those with more than 400 beds — will be nearly $213,000, while the average penalty will be about $1.2 million, according to estimates by Eric Fontana, an analyst at The Advisory Board Company, a consulting company based in Washington. For hospitals with 200 or fewer beds, the average bonus will be about $32,000 and the average penalty will be about $131,000, Fontana estimated. Twenty-eight percent of hospitals will break even or get extra money.
via 1,700 Hospitals Win Quality Bonuses From Medicare, But Most Will Never Collect | Kaiser Health News.
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