I think everyone has figured out Obama's answer to that question by now.
It’s BO’s cost-cutting plan. The hospitals won’t readmit you if you’ve exceeded your quota of admissions, so you will die at home. This statistic won’t besmirch the hospital’s mortality total...also being monitored by ObamaCare...and ObamaCare can save the money that would have been spent on you had you been readmitted.
It will be interesting to see how ObamaCare will affect life spans in the USA, but you can bet government officials will still live to be 90+.
"A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours, and recovery is when Obama loses his."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF3ChLR4SsI
Why do I suspect that any institution or MD providing care will be penalized!!!
The banksters, after all , expect that money in Medicare to wind up in their pockets!!!
And it is so damned obvious how hospitals are going to react to this.
They will each hire a Michelle Obama for the purpose of encouraging patients to go to some other hospital if it has been less than 30 days since their last stay. They will probably even work out deals with other hospitals to “trade” patients to keep them all over the 30 day limit.
Gubbermint types never ever ever ever learn that there’s more than one way to skin a cat.
Hospitals can mitigate the readmission problem by keeping the patients in the hospital longer, BUT that puts them and the doctors at risk for being economically inefficient....longer stays are result in demerits which reduce Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement fees.
Why do I feel that Washington is being run by lily white administrators and college professors who brought the cities of Detroit and East Saint Louis to their present condition?
This could be an unintentional side effect. What happens if the hospital refuses to admit a patient to avoid this? Do they get sued? Or they just limit how many medicare patients they have in the first place.
Just experienced the preliminary ramifications of this regulation. When mom’s stage 4 bone cancer resulted in two crushed vertebrae while 5 hours away from home, she was admitted to an out of town hospital. Even though “pallative care” and pain management is her only recourse, the hospital would not discharge her because “they didn’t want to see her back in the emergency room.” It was stressed by every doctor and nurse on her case that Medicare would NOT pay for her stay if we left against medical advice (AMA). Before it was over, the hospital admin finally fessed up that hospital practitioners are TRAINED to say this even though it is not true. We were forced to leave AMA much the same way she was forced to participate in govt. Mediscare even though she had private insurance/financial means.
She is home now, after a week of being held PRISONER and subjected to unnecessary expensive tests (charged to John Q. TAXPAYER) with no access to HER doctors (familiar with her case) or home while family members incurred HUGE travel/lodging expenses.
My advice…don’t get sick or hurt while out of town especially under these new BS regulations. Hospitals will refuse or be hesitant to discharge terminally ill patients (who WILL be readmitted FOR THE SAME ILLNESS) because these huge fines affect their bottom line.
Hospitals are TRAINING THEIR STAFF TO LIE as they gear up for ObamaCare. Be Warned!
There's already a mechanism in place for that in Home Heath Care service providers. But in practice once the pt is discharged from the hospital, and returned under the charge of the primary doc for ongoing monitoring, assessments don't flow back to the hospital/hospitalists in most cases. Or, at best, indirectly, and therefore not timely. That can be remedied
And so long as risk-adjusted measures are fairly factored in for complex cases and those with known high re-admission rts, the vision is true. Even the decision to re-admit to hospital exposes a pt to heightened risk, and isn't a desirable goal, with no regard to treatment costs. We should not be clamoring for more hospital stays!
Readmission isn't a stand-alone outcome model though important. In practice this can serve to maximize quality of care during hospitalization which is a good thing. Anyone who thinks Medicare guidelines don't chart the course of care for its subscribers already are uninformed. So do those carriers in the pvt sector, btw. It can be, and often is, equally restrictive depending upon your plan. (If you're a politician, for example, the sky's the limit but they are a select few- elite).
I'm not advocating for the Medicare pgm, far from it, but for a large subset it's controlling and entrenched; vigilant oversight and informed debate is vital; the best we can do for now.
Also note these changes are being driven, really, not by Obama or his policy czars but by Balanced Budget Act of 1997. Improving health care delivery seems to be the goal here and outcomes based models are the best measurement tools.
New tagline...
I read somewhere that Rush said the country could in fact survive another 4 years of the Kenyan Marxist. I respectfully don't agree.
The 'incentive' here would tend to encourage 'death' to the above... Next dems will rewrite laws so patient families can't sue. That's the other shoe. Citizens will still be able to sue doctors until they're taken over by ObamaCare - but they won't be able to sue hospitals. This plan will put the hospitals on the side of government - and pitted against doctors.
Another 'unintended consequence' will be very private hospitals that ONLY take people with private insurance...or seniors with supplemental insurance that covers excess costs.. In short, LIBERAL ELITES will find a way they can opt out of the horror.
In Communists countries, party members were treated as elitist - with the advantage of not having to pay more. Democrat elites will figure that one out... Eff 'em.