Posted on 10/01/2012 2:07:45 PM PDT by lowbridge
The readmission penalty, authorized by the 2010 health-care law, is one of the first examples of the incentives Medicare, the single largest payer of hospital services, is using to try to lower costs and improve care.
Some of the hardest-hit facilities are inner-city hospitals that tend to treat sicker, poorer patients. These patients sometimes end up being readmitted because they have a harder time getting medication and follow-up doctors’ appointments, often because they lack transportation, hospital officials said.
“Not only do we have the very sick patients, they also have very significant social needs,” said Kamaljit Sethi, who heads quality and safety at Providence Hospital in Northeast, where officials estimate they will lose about $320,000 in the coming year.
Cash-strapped Howard University in Northwest was the only area hospital hit by the maximum penalty of 1 percent of its Medicare payments. Howard will receive about $400,000 less in payments in the coming year, according to an analysis of Medicare data for fiscal 2011.
(Excerpt) Read more at libertynews.com ...
My mom was in and out of the hospital several times in her last 2 months.
Possibly the goal is to get the hospital to tell the patient, “we can’t do anything more for you,” and send him/her home or to hospice sooner.
Maybe wealthier patients won’t be sent home as quickly...not sure.
Here come the executive “waivers”....
‘lower costs and improve care’ Riiiigggghhhhtttt (in a Dr Evil voice)
Somehow, the media will turn this into a bunch of sob stories about how those rich hospitals are just so greedy that they won’t treat patients for the government-mandated price. If someone has complications, well keep them for free for an extra couple weeks until you are 100% certain they are OK. And when the hospital goes bankrupt? Oh well. Time to build a government-owned hospital in its place, or have the government take it over and start subsidizing it. Then it will be OK to kill people through negligence because the media won’t be doing stories about it anymore.
If they are not admitted as a Medicare patient .....
What you will see is more use of outpatient services, before initial admission and in the 30 day window between admissions.
Nobody outside this forum cares. Everyone apparently wants the socialist back in the office to finish giving them “Free” stuff. Enjoy!
Medicare push’s the hospitals to dump these people back in the streets as soon as possible so they can save money.
Now they want to punish the hospital for doing what they told them to do.
They toss them in the street too soon and they come back, that’s what is happening.
The smart thing to do would be to care for them until they are ready for discharge.
Never expect Government to do the smart thing.
SSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHH! Not until after the election please -— Your President.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.