Medicare Fines for High Hospital Readmissions Drop, but Nearly 2,300 Facilities Are Still Penalized

(By Jordan Rau for Kaiser Health News)

The federal government has eased its annual punishments for hospitals with higher-than-expected readmission rates in an acknowledgment of the upheaval the covid-19 pandemic has caused, resulting in the lightest penalties since 2014.

The Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program has been a mainstay of Medicare’s hospital payment system since it began in 2012. Created by the Affordable Care Act, the program evaluates the frequency with which Medicare patients at most hospitals return within 30 days and lowers future payments to hospitals that had a greater-than-expected rate of return. Hospitals can lose up to 3% of each Medicare payment for a year. Continue reading here…

Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit national health policy news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J Kaiser Family Foundation.

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