Medicare Eases Readmission Penalties Against Safety-Net Hospitals
Penalties will total $566 million for all hospitals. But many that serve a large share of low-income patients will lose less money than they did in previous years.
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Penalties will total $566 million for all hospitals. But many that serve a large share of low-income patients will lose less money than they did in previous years.
Two-thirds of Americans worry about unexpectedly large bills from doctors, hospitals or other medical providers, a poll shows. Four in 10 have received one in the past year.
The study follows a Kaiser Health News and New York Times investigation that found nearly 1,400 nursing homes have reported fewer registered nurses on duty than Medicare requires or failed to provide reliable staffing information to the government.
Low staffing is a root cause of many injuries in nursing homes. Kaiser Health News senior correspondent Jordan Rau explains how he connected the dots between manpower and risk at facilities nationwide, using a federal tool known as the Payroll-Based Journal.
Medicare said those homes either lacked a registered nurse for “a high number of days” over three months, provided data the government couldn’t verify or didn’t supply their payroll data at all.
Daily nursing home payroll records just released by the federal government show the number of nurses and aides dips far below average on some days and consistently plummets on weekends.
Despite a decision by the Trump administration to ask a court to nullify the portion of the health law guaranteeing coverage to the sick, the Kaiser Family Foundation poll finds most people want insurers to be required to offer coverage and not charge more.
One in 5 Medicare patients who leave the hospital for a nursing home end up back in the hospital. To discourage this, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will soon give bonuses and penalties to facilities based on their rehospitalization rates.
The economy and jobs tend to eclipse health care as the top voter concern in competitive congressional and gubernatorial races.
Seven states saw a third or more of their hospitals punished under the federal heath law’s campaign against hospital-acquired conditions.
Increasingly, owners of nursing homes outsource services to companies in which they also have financial interest or control. That allows the nursing homes to claim to be in the red while owners reap hidden profits.
Medicare is discouraging regional offices from levying fines for “one-time mistakes” or from using daily fines that seek to put pressure on nursing homes to make changes.
A Kaiser Health News analysis of federal inspection records shows that nursing home inspectors labeled mistakes in infection control as serious for only 161 of the 12,056 homes they have cited since 2014.
Each hospital will have its payments reduced by 1 percent for the year.
Nearly three-quarters of Americans would like to see the administration focus on efforts on making the Affordable Care Act work, rather than trying to make it fail.
Medicaid covers about two-thirds of nursing home residents, but it pays less than other types of insurance.
Too often enforcement of rules for dealing with crisis is lax, advocates for nursing home residents say.
Federal records show that 2,573 hospitals around the country will have their Medicare payments reduced because they have too many patients readmitted.
Six in 10 Americans say they do not approve of the Senate Republicans’ plan to replace Obamacare, according to a poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
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