786 hospitals will see their Medicare payments slashed one percent for a year because of their performance under Medicare’s hospital-acquired conditions reduction program.

That program penalizes the 25 percent of hospitals with the highest rate of patient safety problems, such as infections and injuries.

Among the more interesting aspects of this year’s program results:

• Among those being penalized are seven of the 21 hospitals on the S. News “best hospitals” list.
• Three hospitals also on that list have never been penalized.
• 145 hospitals will be penalized for the first time.
• 16 hospitals that have been penalized every year since the program’s launch six years ago will not be penalized for the first time.

Since the program’s launch, 1865 of the 5276 hospitals that participate in the program have been penalized.

NASH has long been concerned about the manner in which the hospital-acquired conditions reduction program works, including its failure to reflect improved performance by individual hospitals and its approach of comparing the performance of hospitals that serve very different patients under very different circumstances.

Learn more about Medicare’s hospital-acquired conditions reduction program and this year’s penalties in the Kaiser Health News article “Preeminent Hospitals Penalized Over Rates Of Patients’ Injuries.”