Next year fourteen of Connecticut’s 31 hospitals will be
penalized by Medicare for poor rates of potentially avoidable complications,
according to an analysis by Kaiser
Health News. While this is down from eighteen this year, it is almost three
times higher than the US average. Seven Connecticut hospitals have been
penalized under this program every year since the program began in 2014, a much
higher rate than other states. The penalties
are based on the rate of patients with conditions such as blood clots,
falls or bed sores, and for the first time since beginning the quality program
three years ago, Medicare included antibiotic-resistant infections in the
calculations. The CDC estimates that 23,000 Americans die each year of
antibiotic resistant bacterial infections they got in a hospital. Penalized
hospitals will lose 1% of all Medicare payments for the year that began in
October. A recent
study found that a similar Medicare quality improvement program – the
Hospital Readmission Reduction Program – improved performance in all but one
state, especially among the lowest performing hospitals. Under the program, Medicare
readmissions dropped 7.7% in CT from 2010 to 2015.
