Obamacare Fines Begin For Hospitals That Readmit Sick Patients
Hospitals who re-admit patients within 30 days after they were discharged will now have to, under an Obamacare provision, pay fines as of October 1, 2012, which could force hospitals to slash programs that help the elderly, the poor, and the chronically ill.
According to a study, "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."
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12 comments:
If the hospitals cared for the patient's condition appropriately when they were first admitted, they shouldn't have to be readmitted 30 days later!
What about that don't you (as a chronic government health care recipient) understand?
The old rules actually gave hospitals financial incentives to keep patients coming back (i.e. not healing them).
The new rules give hospitals a financial incentive to heal the patient so they don't have to come back.
How can you possibly be against putting healing patients above hospital cash flow?
I absolutely LOVE "Obamacare" because it means I can continue to provide health insurance (which includes birth control) for my daughter under my employer provided plan instead of throwing her to the wolves.
Four More Years!
XO is right, again. How often do you hear Republicans say they are going to crack down on waste, fraud and abuse. Now that something is being done about it, the right is screaming bloody murder.
Joe, if you cared about facts you would look beyond Breitbart for info. The fines (it's actually reductions in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements) are levied on hospitals that have too many re-admissions. The average penalty is less than half of 1%. It only covers cases of Acute Myocardial Infarction, Heart Failure and Pneumonia. The formula for determining 'too many' is spelled out at CMS.gov.
a measure of a hospital’s readmission performance compared to the national average for the hospital’s set of patients with that applicable condition. CMS established a policy of using the risk adjustment methodology endorsed by the National Quality Forum (NQF) for the readmissions measures for AMI, HF and PN to calculate the excess readmission ratios. The excess readmission ratio includes adjustment for factors that are clinically relevant including patient demographic characteristics, comorbidities, and patient frailty.
Does that sound unreasonable? Do you also have a problem with this?
Hospitals and individuals are stealing from the program that has kept you alive and mobile. Now you have a problem with cracking down on the theft. Unbelievable.
This may be a bit off topic, but what I wanted to add is the following, When Obama killed bin Laden, and "spiked the ball" and took the credit for it, at every chance and every opportunity that he was able to and bragged at the democrat convention about the killing.and thus got a helicopter full of Navy Seals killed, Well now he can add the killing of four Americans on the 9/11 anniversary attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazito to his list of accomplishments.
What you’ve ignored is the Obama administration's successes. You won’t find people with pre-existing conditions decrying the ACA; you won’t find the previously unemployed complaining about having found a job; you won’t find citizens with invested pension plans bitchin’ about the fact that the stock market has rebounded.
One can’t help but wonder why, if Barack Obama is indeed the worst president ever, as you contend, simply pointing to his record as POTUS wouldn't suffice in swaying the voters against trusting him with a second term.
But we all know the answer to that one as well. In slowly but painstakingly attempting to undo the damage caused by the RepublicanT party’s unwavering support of the last Republican president (who, as is your party’s wish, shall remain nameless, lest the populace be reminded of how we got where we are), President Obama has established a record that not even the most clever among you can twist into something unproductive or untoward. Unemployment is down, the stock market is up, the confidence of voters that the country is back on the right track is undeniable, and our foreign allies once again respect our nation’s leadership.You 'any one but Obama' lunkheads know no more today than you did yesterday about how OMitt intends to accomplish all he has repeatedly promised. No specifics, no numbers, no details – just the same old/same old “elect me first, and then we’ll discuss it” obfuscation that a well-practiced flim-flam man extols before the satisfaction guaranteed or your money happily refunded label falls off the bottle of cat piss he’s passed off as a cure-all for all that ails a troubled populace.
No thank you.
Ema Nymton
~@:o?
@Craig --- XO is right, again. How often do you hear Republicans say they are going to crack down on waste, fraud and abuse. Now that something is being done about it, the right is screaming bloody murder.
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That's because what thy really like to do is scream and complain.
They will complain about the costs but when legislation actually tries to manage costs in order to make universal care affordable they get all bent up.
The last thing the fringe right wants is to work toward a solution. Joe ha his hip and forget the rest.
yep one size fits all so if you live in a rural area and you can't find a doctor because they don't take medicare I guess the hospital is the only choice.
If you were in the hospital for say oh a heart attack and you have chest pains 28 days later, that's the hospital's fault because they didn't turn you into a 20 year old again? Oh I hear Nancy in the backgorund how we have to pass the bill to find out what's in it. Music to my ears.
I wonder how many businesses won't hire someone knowing they have a few kids and they they will have to provide them insurance for the next 10 - 15 years and p[osbly their maternity costs and 10 years worth of birth control
Even my car repairs are under a better warranty than that. So much for caring liberals.
xo: "If the hospitals cared for the patient's condition appropriately when they were first admitted, they shouldn't have to be readmitted 30 days later!"
What an irrational statement.
There a thousands of ailments that are not cured by one trip to the hospital. And there are thousands of others that are cured and then happen again.
Too bad if they happen again too soon...right?
It seems that there were good studies performed trying to identify the problems of readmission. They found of 26 045 patients, 12.6% were readmitted to hospital within 30 days and 20.9% were readmitted within 90 days of discharge. High-risk patients accounted for 34.0% of the sample but 51.7% of the patients who were readmitted within 30 days. High-risk patients were readmitted with twice the frequency as other patients, had longer lengths of stay and were more likely to die during the readmission. Because of these studies, the idea is to force hospitals to stop releasing no insurance or poor patients before they are ready. It's true, but its to prevent expensive readmission costs and will actually save lives and bring hospital costs down.
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