Hospital readmission penalties peak; 26 Iowa hospitals penalized
The federal government’s readmission penalties on hospitals will reach a new high as Medicare withholds more than half a billion dollars in payments over the next year, Kaiser Health News reported.
Medicare said the penalties are expected to total $528 million, about $108 million more than last year, because of changes in how readmissions are measured.
The government will punish more than half of the nation’s hospitals — a total of 2,597 — for having more patients than expected who return within a month. While that is about the same number penalized last year, the average penalty will increase by a fifth, according to a Kaiser Health News analysis.
Of the 34 Iowa hospitals subject to the program, all but eight will pay readmission penalties in 2017, according to a database compiled by Kaiser Health News.
Among Greater Des Moines hospitals, Broadlawns Medical Center, Mercy Medical Center-Des Moines and Iowa Methodist Medical Center have not incurred any penalties in the five years of the program. On the other end of the spectrum, Iowa Lutheran Hospital has been penalized in each of the five years.
The maximum penalty that a hospital can incur is losing 3 percent of its Medicare payment; in Iowa the penalties ranged from a 2.53 percent penalty for Keokuk Area Hospital to 0.01 percent for University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.
The new penalties, which take effect in October, are based on the re-hospitalization rate for patients with six common conditions. Since the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program began in October 2012, national readmission rates have dropped as many hospitals pay more attention to how patients fare after their release.
Medicare examined these conditions: heart attacks, heart failure, pneumonia, chronic lung disease, hip and knee replacements, and — for the first time this year — coronary artery bypass graft surgery.
The penalties are the subject of a prolonged debate about whether the government should consider the special challenges faced by hospitals that treat large numbers of low-income people. Those patients can have more trouble recuperating, sometimes because they can’t afford their medications or lack social support to follow physician instructions, such as reducing the amount of dietary salt for heart failure patients.
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