Accelerating drug approvals and funding the cancer “moonshot” were the more widely-covered aspects of the 21st Century Cures Act signed into law last year. Yet it also contained a new path for safety-net hospitals to avoid readmissions penalties.
As Yale-New Haven Hospital quality measures program director Susannah Bernheim, MD, MHS, and associate director Karen Dorsey, MD, PhD, write in a Health Affairs blog, the changes could directly mitigate the negative impact of those penalties on safety-net facilities.
Instead of facing a penalty of up to 3 percent of Medicare reimbursements for not reducing readmissions, HHS will set different penalty thresholds based on the hospital’s Medicare-Medicaid dual eligibility patient population.
“Indeed, this is what the Medicare Payment Advisory Committee recommended to Congress three years ago,” Bernheim and Dorsey wrote. “Recognizing that safety-net providers may have low financial margins and may need to make significant investments to improve readmission rates, the law allows for penalties to be set among peer hospitals, while maintaining a national standard for quality.”
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John joined TriMed in 2016, focusing on healthcare policy and regulation. After graduating from Columbia College Chicago, he worked at FM News Chicago and Rivet News Radio, and worked on the state government and politics beat for the Illinois Radio Network. Outside of work, you may find him adding to his never-ending graphic novel collection.