20
READMISSION
REDUCTION
CMS Penalizes 2.6k Hospitals for High Readmissions: 5 Statistics
By Brooke Murphy
I
n fiscal year 2017, CMS will withhold $528 million
in Medicare reimbursements to hospitals with high-
er-than-expected readmission rates as part of the
Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program, reports Kaiser
Health News.
This is the fifth year of the Hospital Readmissions Reduc-
tion Program. The federal agency released this year's
results Aug. 2. CMS examined hospitals' 30-day readmis-
sion rates for seven conditions: heart attacks, heart failure,
pneumonia, chronic lung disease, hip and knee replace-
ments and coronary artery bypass graft surgery. This is
the first time in the five years of the readmission reduction
program that CABG surgery was included in the tally.
To determine fines, CMS used patient data from July 2012
to June 2015. For each hospital, it compared a hospital's
reported readmission rate to what CMS determined was a
reasonable readmission rate, based on national rates and
demographic health.
Hospitals with more unplanned readmissions than ex-
pected will receive a reimbursement reduction for each
Medicare case during the upcoming fiscal year, which runs
Oct. 1 through September 2017.
Below are five statistics.
1. Medicare expects hospitals' penalties to total $528 mil-
lion in 2016, about $108 million more than last year.
2. CMS will penalize 2,597 facilities in FY 2017, five more
hospitals than last year.
3. According to KHN's analysis, 1,621 hospitals have faced
penalties every year in the five years of the program.
4. Forty-nine hospitals will receive the maximum reduction
in reimbursement, or 3 percent of the Medicare rate. That
is up from 38 hospitals that received the largest penalty
last year.
5. The average reduction to hospitals was 0.73 percent for
each Medicare payment, up from 0.61 percent last year. n
LESS TIME.
LESS LABOR.
MORE SAVINGS.
The Surfacide UV-C Disinfection
System is the ONLY system that:
• uses 3 towers instead of 1
• delivers total room disinfection
in a single cycle
• eliminates shadows
To schedule a live demonstration,
call toll free: 844-390-3538.
Surfacide.com
FIRST-GENERATION
UV ROOM CLEANING
20 minutes
*Terminal Decontamination of
Patient Rooms Using an Automated
Mobile UV Light Unit, Infect Control
Hosp Epidemiol 2011;32(8):737-742
51-146.3 minutes,*
moving three to five times
