Medicare penalized UMMC and several other Mississippi hospitals every year for the last five years for patient safety. All metro Jackson area hospitals except MBMC were fined in 2021 as well. Medicare cuts reimbursements to hospitals that have high rates of readmissions or high rates of infections and patient injuries.
Kaiser Health News provides a useful search tool that allows readers to search the Medicare database by state, city, county, and hospital. Kaiser search engine.
Medicare fines hospitals up to 1% of Medicare payments for abnormally high rates of patient infections, injuries, and other conditions acquired in the hospital. The program reduces reimbursements up to 3% for high rates of patient readmissions for the same conditions. However, most fines are substantially below the maximum penalty.
The first section of data posted below is the list Jackson metro area hospitals and some of the larger hospitals in Mississippi that were fined by Medicare for patient safety violations. The second section of data is the list of readmission fines.
Patient Safety
UMMC (2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2015)
St. Dominic (2021)
Crossgates River Oaks (2021, 2015)
Merit Health River Oaks (2021, 2016)
Merit Health Central (2020, 2019)
Merit Health Canton (2020, 2019)
MBMC (2018, 2017, 2016)
Mississippi Methodist Rehab ( 2017, 2018)
Anderson Regional (Meridian) (2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2015)
Delta Regional Medical Center (Greenville) ( 2019, 2018, 2017, 2015)
North Mississippi Medical Center (Tupelo): 0
SW Regional Medical Center (McComb): 0
Forrest General (Hattiesburg) (2021, 2020, 2018)
Medicare fined five Mississippi hospitals every year for the last five years for patient safety:
Anderson Regional Medical Center (Meridian)
Baptist Memorial Hospital (Desoto)
Marion General Hospital (Columbia)
Rush Foundation Hospital (Meridian)
UMMC
Readmission
Crossgates River Oaks (0.13)
Merit Health Central (0.50)
Merit Health River Oaks (0.26)
MBMC (0.27)
St. Dominic (0.61)
UMMC (0.21)
NMMC (Tupelo) (0.15)
Delta Regional (Greenville) (0.50)
Forrest General (Hattiesburg) (0.99)
Worst 10 Readmission Offenders
Magnolia Regional (Corinth) (2.43)
South Central Regional (Laurel) (1.77)
Singing River (Pascagoula) (1.67)
Baptist Memorial Desoto (1.67)
Anderson Regional (Meridian) (1.16)
OCH Regional Med Center (Starkville) (1.05)
Forrest General (Hattiesburg) (0.99)
Merit Health River Region (Vicksburg) (0.97)
George Regional (Lucedale) (0.96)
SW Regional Med Center (McComb) (0.87)
8 comments:
King - how does Mississippi stack up against our neighbors - LA, BAMA, ARK & TENN?
I read it all but am not sure what, if anything, I (or anybody else) can do with the information...well, other than draw false conclusions.
Appreciate that search engine KF.
There's not a single hospital administrator who has the authority to "admit" a patient for inpatient services. No administrator had the authority to order a single outpatient test. Only a physician can do that. Enforcement focused on the wrong group.
So if one gets fined every year and nothing changes, what then?
I have limited knowledge of these things but have an elderly parent who recently was hospitalized for over a month. It was Medicare that began to deny payment before anyone else did. We had to appeal for a medical review twice to have her time extended. We didn’t want her to come home early because the outcome would not have been good. At each appeal they would request medical records then agree and extend her stay. If we would not have fought they would have sent her home only 10 days into an extensive recovery and to be honest would have been right back or died at home. It never was the doctors or administrators.
It's much, much more complicated than simply who was fined for readmissions. 83% of hospitals have been fined at one time or another. Readmission for any reason to any acute care hospital within 30 days counts against the original hospital. Even if the readmission had nothing to do with the original problem. One thing this is forcing hospitals to do is leverage some sort of control over what happens to a patient after they leave the hospital. Hospitals are trying to obtain some level of control over home health organizations and nursing home/rehab facilities to reduce re-admits. Even with that, some patients are just sick and will come back.
That is why I carved out a section for hospitals that were fined for five straight years.
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