I wanted to share this with our readers since most of them practice in a hospital.
Medicare is reducing payments to 2610 hospitals from October 1, 2014, through September 30, 2015, because of high 30-day readmission rates, Kaiser Health News reports. That’s three quarters of the hospitals that can be penalized under Medicare’s Readmission Reduction Program.
The fines range from one hundredth of a percent to 3% for hospitals with the highest readmission rates. Medicare expects to save roughly $428 million over the year.
Thirty-day readmissions cost Medicare roughly $26 billion a year, Kaiser reports, with more than half of that cost coming from potentially avoidable readmissions.