Medicare Revises Hospitals' Readmissions Penalties

Medicare's new readmission penalties for hospitals just got a bit tougher. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has discovered errors in its initial calculations in August. As a result, 1,422 hospitals with comparatively high readmission rates will lose slightly more money than they were expecting, according to a Kaiser Health News analysis of the revised penalties. Fifty-five hospitals will lose less than were previously told.

The changes were tiny, averaging two-hundreds of a percent of a hospital’s regular Medicare reimbursements. The largest changes affect Florala Memorial Hospital in Florala, Ala., which will see its penalty increase from 0.62 percent to 0.73 percent of its reimbursements, and Western Pennsylvania Hospital in Pittsburgh, which will see its penalty drop from 0.51 percent to 0.4 percent.

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Source: Kaiser Health News