Patients wanting to choose between hospitals based on various factors can
now compare hospitals side by side on
Medicare’s Hospital Compare website.
“Medicare is changing the way it pays hospitals for services provided
to people with Medicare. Instead of only paying for the number of services
a hospital provides, Medicare is also paying hospitals for providing high
quality services.”
Using the website allows one to know the percentage of Medicare patients
who reported that their room and bathroom were always clean. There is
even information about mortality and readmission rates.
Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program - The Affordable Care Act authorizes
Medicare to reduce payments to acute care hospitals with excess readmissions
that are paid under CMS's inpatient prospective payment system, beginning
October 1, 2012. The program initially focuses on patients who were readmitted
for selected high-cost or high-volume conditions, namely, heart attack,
heart failure, and pneumonia.
High rates of readmission within 30-days of discharge from the hospitals
may result from such factors as:
- Complications from treatments received during a hospital stay
- Inadequate treatment
- Inadequate care coordination and follow up care in the community
- Unexpected worsening of disease after discharge from the hospital
Hospital readmissions may cause undue suffering to patients and their
families and may lead to significant increase in health care spending.
Get more information about Medicare’s Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program.
Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) Program – Medicare now has information about how the quality of a hospital's
care affects the payments it gets from Medicare. The Hospital VBP Program,
established by the Affordable Care Act, implements a pay-for- performance
approach to the payment system that accounts for the largest share of
Medicare spending – affecting payment for inpatient stays in approximately
3,000 hospitals across the country.
Under Hospital VBP, Medicare is adjusting a portion of payments to hospitals
beginning in Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 based on either:
- How well they perform on each measure compared to all hospitals, or
- How much they improve their own performance on each measure compared to
their performance during a prior baseline period.
The Hospital VBP Program is designed to promote better clinical outcomes
for hospitalized patients and improve their experience of care during
hospital stays.
Get more information about the new Hospital Value-Based Purchasing Program.