800 hospitals will see their Medicare payments reduced one percent this year because they are among the 25 percent of hospitals in the U.S. with the highest rate of hospital-acquired conditions.

Among the 800 hospitals are 110 that are being penalized for the fifth year in a row.

Medicare’s hospital-acquired condition reduction program tracks a variety of medical problems, including infections, blood clots, sepsis, hip fractures, bedsores, and others.  Every year, the 25 percent of eligible providers – the program excludes significant numbers of hospitals – are penalized even if their performance for hospital-acquired conditions is superior to the previous year.

Critics of the program say it creates unachievable goals and  penalizes hospitals that are doing an excellent job of reducing hospital-acquired conditions and that there is virtually no statistical difference in performance between some hospitals that are and some hospitals that are not penalized.  Program proponents maintain that all hospitals can and should do an even better job than they already are of reducing their patients’ hospital-acquired conditions.

NASH has long been concerned about the degree to which private safety-net hospitals are at a disadvantage in such programs because of the disproportionately large numbers of low-income patients they serve who pose special health and socio-economic challenges when hospitalized.

Learn more about Medicare’s hospital-acquired conditions reduction program, the penalties some hospitals face in the coming year, and the arguments for and against the program in the Kaiser Health News article “Medicare Trims Payments To 800 Hospitals, Citing Patient Safety Incidents.”