Feds penalize Reno hospitals
By Bill Theobald, Reno Gazette-Journal
WASHINGTON – Six Reno-area hospitals are among 20 Nevada hospitals that will lose some federal funding this year because too many of their elderly Medicare patients were readmitted within 30 days of being discharged.
This is the third year for the penalty program, which was created as part of the Affordable Care Act with the intent of spurring hospitals to pay more attention to what happens to patients after they leave. That’s leading some hospitals around the country to create more active plans for patients once they leave the hospital, such as requiring a follow up with a medical professional.
Meanwhile, hospitals can financially benefit from patients returning for more care. Roughly 2 million patients return a year, costing Medicare about $26 billion. Of that total, officials estimate $17 billion goes for readmissions that could have been avoided.
To help curb that practice, Medicare is fining a record number of hospitals this year — 2,610 — by withholding a percentage of their reimbursements for treating Medicare patients.
OK. Many doctors & facilities are already becoming more reluctant to accept Medicare patients due to the lower reimbursements because of Obamacare. Medicare also has a treatment schedule that does not account for individual factors pertaining to an individual. If you need a certain procedure, Medicare dictates you can only stay in the hospital a certain number of days regardless of whether that time frame is appropriate for the patient. PERIOD. As these patients are older & therefore often have more/complicated medical issues, please explain how penalizing the doctor or facility for readmissions is going to really improve things. There needs to be accountability on both sides. It seems if the discharged patient fails in their obligation to take medications as directed or seek follow-up care, that is NOT the responsibility of the treating facility or doctor.
Obamacare is clearly not what it should be, in part because of the incompetent management from the folks who originally put it together, and, even more so, because of a legislature that was so bound by politics, mostly oppositional, that, despite the need for a program, there was no way it was going to start off successful.
There would still be hope, but the biggest problem, for both patients and doctors, is that the hospital industry, both profit and “non-profit,” has become a huge money maker. Hospitals and medical care facilities have become a great investment and are fleecing the public, the doctors and the health care system. I know many doctors who have been so beaten down by their admitting hospitals that they’ve given up their practices and become employees. Hospital administrators, at, for instance, non-profit University run hospitals, are being compensated many times higher than the University presidents.
Anyone interested in this topic needs to read “America’s Bitter Pill” by Steven Brill, the guy who wrote the amazing and very illuminating article on health care to which Time Magazine devoted an entire issue a few years ago.
Obamacare, however hugely disfigured it is by the political nutballs and the poor management of its introduction, has to succeed and be enhanced, or we’re all screwed beyond imagination.
Everyone argues against what they imagine to be “socialized medicine,” but is medicine for profit really a solution?
Sorry, but reimbursement rates are not the most frightening thing about hospitals- especially the big one in Reno. You have to survive being there before you need to be concerned about returning there- or what your bill is. The doctors, and I saw 5, were awesome and gave great orders for my care but the staff from the lead nurse down, couldn’t understand English enough to follow the Dr.’s orders or even take a medical history without huge errors with life threatening consequences. My main 20 year old aid had 23 patients to look after. If you end-up in the hospital for any reason you have to have someone with you 100% of the time in order not to die from neglect. I am living with cancer that needs to be removed rather put myself back into this dangerous situation with hospitals.