Medicare dings UC Medical Center for infection, injury
Anne Saker, asaker@enquirer.com 4:26 p.m. EST December 23, 2014
One out of every seven hospitals in the country will have Medicare reimbursement cut by 1 percent. The penalties fall especially hard on academic hospitals such as the UC Medical Center.
Medicare will penalize the University of Cincinnati Medical Center 1 percent of all reimbursements in the 2015 fiscal year for not meeting goals to reduce hospital-acquired conditions such as infections. About half the hospitals getting the penalty are academic hospitals. (Photo: The Enquirer)
Medicare has made good on its promise this year to penalize hospitals with high rates of infection and other patient injuries, and the University of Cincinnati Medical Center is among the 721 institutions nationwide getting dinged.
One out of every seven hospitals in the country will have their Medicare reimbursement reduced by 1 percent in the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. The penalties, to total about $373 million, fall especially hard on academic medical centers such as the UC Medical Center. A Kaiser Health News Analysis found that about half of the nation's academic hospitals will be penalized.
In July, Medicare released a preliminary list of hospitals that stood to be hit with the penalties, and nearly half of local hospitals were included. Only the UC Medical Center was on the final list, released last week.
In response, UC Health spokeswoman Diana Lara released a statement:
"UC Health cares deeply about patient safety. As the region's only academic medical center and the region's leader in advanced specialty care, we continually work hard to provide the best possible care for our patients. Academic medical centers treat the most complex patient populations when compared to community hospitals, which are also listed."
Lara's statement also pointed out that compared to other academic hospitals in Ohio and nationally, UC Medical Center improved its clinical quality performance on the Medicare measure "by almost a full standard deviation" from 2012 to 2013. Lara did not say how much a 1 percent reduction in Medicare reimbursements would mean for UC Health.
Overall, the hospital industry is showing success in reducing avoidable errors. A recent report from the federal Health and Human Services Department found that mistakes dropped by 17 percent between 2010 and 2013. Still, one of eight hospital admissions in 2013 included a patient injury.
The five Cincinnati-area Mercy Health hospitals on Medicare's preliminary list for penalties had improved enough to avoid the penalties issued last week, Pat Davis-Hagens, Mercy Health's Cincinnati chief nursing officer, said in a statement:
"We've been working hard on reducing instances of these tough but common conditions, and we've shown regular improvement in these areas," she said. "It's gratifying to see the collective efforts of our care team pay off in these latest results from Medicare."
To determine penalities, Medicare judged hospitals on three measures: frequency of central-line bloodstream infections caused by tubes used to pump fluids or medicine into veins; infections from tubes placed in bladders to remove urine, and rates of eight kinds of serious complications that occurred in hospitals, including collapsed lungs, surgical cuts, tears and reopened wounds and broken hips.
Kaiser Health News contributed..
http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/you.../20814503/