AUGUST 4, 2015, 11:10 PM LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 5, 2015, 12:09 PM
BY LINDY WASHBURN
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
Nearly every hospital in New Jersey is being penalized by the federal government because too many Medicare patients had to be readmitted within a month of their discharge — the highest percentage of hospitals penalized in the 50 states.
The cuts — of up to 2.49 percent of a hospital’s Medicare payments — total $23 million for the state, the New Jersey Hospital Association estimated. It is the second year in a row that nearly every hospital was penalized, except for a handful that are exempted.
Only Bergen Regional Medical Center in Paramus received no penalty.
Medicare, the health care program for those over 65, provides more than $3 billion annually to New Jersey hospitals, making it the single largest source of their revenue and a huge influence on hospital policies. This is the fourth year that payments from the government program have been tied to readmissions, in an effort to reward the quality rather than the quantity of hospital care.
Fourteen New Jersey hospitals will see cuts of more than 1 percent to their Medicare reimbursements beginning in October, including three in North Jersey: Palisades Medical Center in North Bergen, St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center in Paterson and The Valley Hospital in Ridgewood. Their patients returned at higher-than-expected rates after being treated for pneumonia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart attack, heart failure, and knee or hip replacements, the five conditions measured.
Nationwide, about one in five patients treated for those conditions returned to the hospital within a month.
https://www.northjersey.com/news/medicare-cuts-funds-from-n-j-hospitals-1.1386123
I guess the hospital administrators never took any Ethics classes while in school….
Why does NJ have the highest percentage of hospitals in the 50 states seeing readmitted Medicare patients within a month of their discharge? Either the quality of care is the worst in country for Medicare patients, or NJ hospitals are scamming the Medicare system with systematic fraud. I think it’s the latter, classic NJ graft.