Citing poor readmission rates, New Jersey hospitals lose estimated $23M in

The federal government penalized all but one New Jersey hospital this year for having too many patients readmitted soon after they were discharged – and will receive lower Medicare reimbursements as a result.

A bill has been introduced in the Senate to consider socio-economic factors when calculating the penalties, since a study found that hospitals with the smallest profit margins were 36 percent more likely to be penalized, according to Kaiser Health News. 08 percent, compared with.

At St. Joseph’s, which will be penalized 2.15 percent starting in October, many patients “have multiple acute diagnoses, and often face significant unique challenges upon discharge, which we continue to address”, said Nancy Collins, a spokeswoman.

Medicare is incentivizing hospitals to lower their readmission rates.

Providence Tarzana Medical Center had the highest penalty, with a 3% reduction. They cover patients hospitalized for heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia, chronic lung problems or elective hip or knee replacements.

Saint Barnabas’ success – its penalty has dropped each year – has inspired its parent system to copy its “transitions of care” program at all seven of its hospitals. The formula involves the hospital’s patient mix and now the nation’s hospitals performed overall.

“What we have done is taken (the penalty) as an opportunity to look internally” at how the hospital manages the discharge of patients, Fernandez said. There have been concerns about the Hospital Readmission Reduction Program. A total of 506 hospitals, including those facing the maximum penalty, will lose 1 percent of their Medicare payments or more. The government has not yet announced those, but they also begin in October.

The majority of the 2,232 hospitals that escaped Medicare penalties were automatically exempt because they specialize in certain types of patients, were designated as critical access hospitals or didn’t have enough cases for an accurate assessment, the article said.

Lehigh Regional Medical Center, also owned by CHS, will see a 1.25 percent cut.

In this program, the hospital screens all patients when they enter the hospital and assigns them a score for their risk for readmission, based on their condition and medical history.

Center in Winnsboro, Louisiana.

Hospitals have been lobbying both Medicare and Congress to take into account the socioeconomic background of patients when assessing readmission penalties.

The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, which advises Congress, has recommended altering the readmission penalties. Joseph Manchin III, D-West Virginia, and Roger Wicker, R-Mississippi, wrote last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

At least one hospital in every state but Maryland, which has a special exemption, was penalized (Kaiser Health News, 8/3).

Aline Holmes, NJHA’s senior vice president, says about two-thirds of the state’s hospitals decreased their readmission rates this year, but others still have some work to do.

The agency said in the rule that it doesn’t want to hold hospitals to different standards for the outcomes of their patients of low sociodemographic status because it does’t want to “mask potential disparities or minimize incentives to improve the outcomes of disadvantaged populations”.