Nearly 2600 hospitals will be penalized by Medicare in FY 2020 for excessive patients readmissions under Medicare’s hospital readmissions reduction program, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

In all, 83 percent of hospitals covered by the program will be penalized, forfeiting up to three percent of their Medicare payments with an average penalty of 0.71 percent of those payments.  The cumulative penalties for these hospitals will amount to $563 million in FY 2020.

In all, 1177 hospitals will be penalized more than they were last year and 1148 will be penalized less.  56 hospitals will be assessed the maximum penalty of three percent and 372 have not been penalized for the past two years.

More than 2000 hospitals, among them children’s, psychiatric, and critical access hospitals, are not covered by the program.

Learn more about how hospitals will be affected by Medicare’s hospital readmissions reduction program and what this may say about the value and effectiveness of the program in the Kaiser Health News story “New Round of Medicare Readmissions Penalties Hits 2583 Hospitals.”