Many hospital patients will tell you they didn’t really feel safe until they were discharged from care. And now Medicare is on the case. As reports of in-hospital infections, sepsis and complications from treatment grow, Medicare is holding health organizations accountable for their performance in this area.
In its latest report on the largest hospital safety offenders, Medicare counted 758 hospitals on its list of miscreants. Medicare reduces its payments to these organizations, so it’s no small matter. And despite several years of this punitive treatment of treatment centers, more hospitals were on this list this year than last, when 721 were punished.
The payment reduction doesn’t seem like much on the face of it: 1 percent for those on this list. But it adds up. Overall, those being “fined” will lose $364 million.
Among those on the list are some prestigious players: the Cleveland Clinic, the Mayo Clinic, Stanford Health Care and Cancer Treatment Centers of America. And about half on this year’s list made last year’s Nightmare Team.
Representatives of several of the penalized hospitals complained to Kaiser Health News that the penalties don’t take into account the complexities of treatment programs, which vary from hospital to hospital, nor efforts to improve. But others were more public relations savvy.
Typical was the statement from Dr. Brian Whited, vice chair of operations at Mayo. Two Mayo hospitals were on the list. He said Mayo Clinic supports the effort to clean up hospitals.
“As an organization, we’re not satisfied with these results and understand we have work to do to reduce hospital-acquired conditions,” Whited said. “We support the objectives of the Hospital-Acquired Condition Reduction Program, and all our practices have been developing improvement strategies and other changes to reduce those conditions.”
Complete your profile to continue reading and get FREE access to BenefitsPRO, part of your ALM digital membership.
Your access to unlimited BenefitsPRO content isn’t changing.
Once you are an ALM digital member, you’ll receive:
- Breaking benefits news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
- Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
- Critical converage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
Already have an account? Sign In Now
© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
Dan Cook
Dan Cook is a journalist and communications consultant based in Portland, OR. During his journalism career he has been a reporter and editor for a variety of media companies, including American Lawyer Media, BusinessWeek, Newhouse Newspapers, Knight-Ridder, Time Inc., and Reuters. He specializes in health care and insurance related coverage for BenefitsPRO.
