Kaiser Health News recently reported that approximately half of the country’s hospitals will receive lower payments for Medicare patients due to their history of patient readmissions. These penalties, which are a part of the Affordable Care Act’s Hospital Readmission Reduction Program, come at a time where many of the affected hospitals are trying to recover from negative financial impacts of the coronavirus.
Out of the 5,267 hospitals in the country, Medicare will lower a year’s worth of payments to 2,545 hospitals, with an average reduction of 0.69%. Congress has exempted 2,176 hospitals throughout the country that were either considered critical access hospitals or hospitals that specialize in psychiatric patients, children, veterans, rehabilitation or long-term care.
The impacts from the coronavirus have not affected the latest round of penalties as they were calculated using hospital cases between July 2016 and June 2019. In September, The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced they “may suspend the penalty program in the future if the chaos surrounding the pandemic, including the spring’s moratorium on elective surgeries, makes it too difficult to assess hospital performance.”
Akin Demehin, director of policy at the American Hospital Association, feels that it’s “unfortunate that hospitals will face readmission penalties in fiscal year 2021. Given the financial strain that hospitals are under, every dollar counts, and the impact of any penalty is significant.”
