Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1191144
37 QUALITY IMPROVEMENT & MEASUREMENT CMS penalizes 2,583 hospitals for high readmissions: 5 things to know By Ayla Ellison D uring fiscal year 2020, CMS will penal- ize 2,583 hospitals for having too many Medicare patients readmitted within 30 days, according to federal data released Sept. 30 cited in a Kaiser Health News report. is is the eighth year of the Hospital Read- missions Reduction Program. To determine penalties for fiscal 2020, CMS examined hospitals' 30-day readmission rates for patients who had originally been treated for the following conditions: heart failure, heart attack, pneumonia, chronic lung disease, hip and knee replacement or coronary artery bypass gra surgery. Scheduled readmissions were not counted. CMS used patient data from July 2015 through June 2018 to determine the penal- ties. e agency compared each hospital's reported readmission rate to national aver- ages for each of the conditions to determine the penalties. Here are five takeaways from the Kaiser Health News analysis: 1. Eighty-three percent of the 3,129 hospitals evaluated received a penalty. 2. CMS will cut payments to the penalized hospitals by as much as 3 percent for each Medicare case during fiscal 2020, which runs Oct. 1 through September 2020. 3. Fiy-six hospitals were hit with the max- imum penalty. e average penalty will be a 0.71 percent payment cut for each Medicare patient. 4. ough 64 hospitals received the same penalty as the year prior, 1,177 hospitals received a higher penalty and 1,148 hospitals received a lower penalty. 5. In fiscal 2020, CMS will withhold an esti- mated $563 million in Medicare payments to hospitals under the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program. n Study: Nurses' concern can predict patient deterioration By Gabrielle Masson S eventy-seven percent of nurses correctly predicted patient deterioration, with accuracy rates significantly higher in nurses with more than a year of experience, according to a Mayo Clinic study published in JAMIA Open. Researchers from the Rochester, Minn.-based hospital evaluated nurses' ability to detect future physiological deterioration based on a five-point score called the "wor- ry factor." They asked nurses to report real-time changes in their sense of worry for patients. Researchers collected this data from two medical and two surgical adult hospital units, covering 31,159 shifts for 3,185 different patients. Cases were evaluated by three independent reviewers. Of the 492 potential deterioration events nurses iden- tified, reviewers confirmed 380 of them, or 77 percent. Nurses with more than a year of experience had a 79 percent accuracy rate, compared to 68 percent for those with less experience. A patient with a worry factor score of three or more was 40-times more likely to require in- tensive care unit transfer within 24 hours, further support- ing the theory that nurses' sense of worry can accurately identify deteriorating patients. Research suggests that at least some of nurses' accuracy is due to a pattern recognition process, not just objective vital sign information. The researchers recommend that nurse concern regarding patient deterioration be incor- porated in EMRs. n 5 best, worst states for flu shot coverage By Mackenzie Bean W est Virginia has the highest rate of flu vaccine coverage among adults, according to a ranking from the personal finance website WalletHub. WalletHub compared all 50 states and the District of Co- lumbia across 18 different measures related to vaccination rates and disparities among all age groups. Metrics includ- ed flu vaccination rates among both adults and children. Researchers used data from several different sources, in- cluding the U.S. Census Bureau, CDC and Health Resourc- es and Services Administration to compile the ranking. Five best states for flu shot coverage: 1. West Virginia 2. Washington 3. Minnesota 4. Maryland 5. Rhode Island Five worst states for flu shot coverage: 1. Louisiana 2. Tennessee 3. Texas 4. Indiana 5. Wyoming n