Medicare Fines

From Yahoo:
"Medicare fines over hospitals' readmitted patients"

If you or an elderly relative have been hospitalized recently and noticed extra attention when the time came to be discharged, there's more to it than good customer service. As of Monday, Medicare will start fining hospitals that have too many patients readmitted within 30 days of discharge due to complications. About two-thirds of the hospitals serving Medicare patients, or some 2,200 facilities, will be hit with penalties averaging around $125,000 per facility this coming year, according to government estimates. Data to assess the penalties have been collected and crunched, and Medicare has shared the results with individual hospitals. Medicare plans to post details online later in October, and people can look up how their community hospitals performed by using the agency's "Hospital Compare" website. It adds up to a new way of doing business for hospitals, and they have scrambled to prepare for well over a year. They are working on ways to improve communication with rehabilitation centers and doctors who follow patients after they're released, as well as connecting individually with patients. Consumer advocates say Medicare's nudge to hospitals is long overdue and not nearly stiff enough. "It's modest, but it's a start," said Dr. John Santa, director of the Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center. "Should we be surprised that industry is objecting? You would expect them to object to anything that changes the status quo." For the first year, the penalty is capped at 1 percent of a hospital's Medicare payments. The overwhelming majority of penalized facilities will pay less. Also, for now, hospitals are only being measured on three medical conditions: heart attacks, heart failure and pneumonia. Under the health care law, the penalties gradually will rise until 3 percent of Medicare payments to hospitals are at risk. Medicare is considering holding hospitals accountable on four more measures: joint replacements, stenting, heart bypass and treatment of stroke.

                

^ I am all for holding hospitals accountable for poor/bad treatment, medicine mix-ups, neglect, etc but it seems this new fine will be very hard for Medicare to prove and hospitals will continue their downward spiral. It also shouldn't only be for those on Medicare, but for everyone. I don't really see this new fine as working out, but will keep an eye on how things go. ^

http://news.yahoo.com/medicare-fines-over-hospitals-readmitted-084833994.html