Posted on 11/24/2017 12:37:43 PM PST by reaganaut1
ObamaCare has caused hard-to-quantify economic damage, but some of the laws regulations may be lethalliterally. Consider a Medicare hospital payment initiative, which a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association Cardiology suggests may have contributed to an increase in deaths.
Readers are likely familiar with ObamaCares mandate and subsidies to impel individuals to obtain health insurance. But the law also included monetary incentives and penalties aimed at inducing changes in health-care delivery and spending reductions. The government rolled out these payment models nationally without careful study, and they are having unintended side effects.
A case in point is the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program, which penalizes hospitals with above-average readmissions for Medicare patients. Readmissions are expensive, and the goal of the penalties is to encourage providers to take measures that reduce repeat hospitalizationsfor instance, providing patients with clearer discharge instructions and coordinating with primary-care physicians.
Hospitals are graded on a curve and dunned if their 30-day readmission rate exceeds the national average. Hospitals can thus be penalized even if they reduce readmissions. The penalties, which are assessed as a share of hospitals Medicare payments, have been applied to an increasing number of medical conditions including knee and hip replacements.
Liberals have touted data showing that readmissions have fallen since the penalties took effect in 2013, but the JAMA researchers examined whether quality of care has improved as a result. Their observational study examined 115,245 fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries hospitalized with heart failure across the U.S. in the four years prior to and first two years following implementation of the program.
Researchers found that the 30-day readmission rate (adjusted for patient risk) declined to 18.4% from 20% after the penalties were introduced. Yet the 30-day mortality rate increased to 8.6% from 7.2%about 5,400 additional deaths per year.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Watch out bucket!
Here comes a drop!!
CHOICE kills a million a year.
But it's OUR room and Our elephant; so we just dispose of the piles of crap it leaves all around; and continue to ignore the effects it has on our society.
What should we expect anyway?
It is clear that half of all doctors graduated in the lower 50% of their class.
1 in 4 viable unborn human children NEVER even make it TO the cradle!
But close enough for Government work.
They're not immune from the effects of administering health care on a budget.
Can’t argue with your point.
That is a very valid point.
I remember tracking this myself for a while. It was not insignificant in dollars.
First they want them to clear the beds ASAP then they want to penalize if they cleared the bed too early .....seen some folks pushed out the door when it was obvious they were still very ill and/or had nobody to assist them. One died because his “Flu” turned out to be sepsis from regular red blood cell transfusions he was getting....he got back in time to have a massive heart attack because his body was too beat up from the real problem.
He said, no emergency surgery this late at night, too risky. Lets put you on antibiotics, admit you overnight and hope to ease the inflammation and have surgery tomorrow morning with the best surgeons. He waited and all went well.
ObamaCare - the gift that just keeps on killing.
If you read the creators of the ACA, writings from the 60's you would know it was all about killing off the elderly. One of them even said out loud, when you become a non producer, a non contributor to society due to your age, not worth the cost to keep you alive.
Useful article. Yet another example of directly foreseen failure.
Why don’t they just kill the really sick patients instead of discharging them? Definitely no re-admission then.
/s
Please. Do. NOT. Give. Them. Any. Ideas.
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