The federal government Thursday lowered a year’s worth of Medicare payments to 751 hospitals to penalize them for having the highest rates of patient injuries.
More than half also were punished last year through the penalty, which was created by the Affordable Care Act and began four years ago. The program is designed as a financial incentive for hospitals to avoid infections and other mishaps, such as blood clots and bedsores.
The penalties again fell heavily on teaching hospitals, although less than before. A third of them were punished this year, a Kaiser Health News analysis of the penalties found. Last year, the penalty was levied on nearly half of the nation’s teaching hospitals.
The 115 penalized academic medical centers this year include Denver Health Medical Center, Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, The Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, Stanford Health Care hospitals in California and the University of California-San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center, according to federal records.
“Academic medical centers serve patients with more-complex conditions who are at greater risk of hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) compared to community health care providers,” Stanford Health Care said in a written statement. “Hospitals with a high rate of immunocompromised patients will always seem to have higher HAIs.”