Senators introduce bill to change readmissions program
A bipartisan group of U.S. Senators introduced a bill to revamp the readmissions program created as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and help hospitals that serve low-income patients.
They are seeking to alter the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program, in which the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) reduces payments to acute care inpatient hospitals that have excess readmissions.
CMS defines readmission as a patient being admitted to the same hospital within 30 days of discharge. The program applies to acute myocardial infarction, heart failure and pneumonia.
The Senators involved are Democrats Joe Manchin (West Virginia), Bill Nelson (Florida), Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and Republicans Rob Portman (Ohio), Roger Wicker (Mississippi) and Mark Kirk (Illinois).
They said in a news release that hospitals do not have much influence on readmissions and cited studies that have found hospitals that serve urban and rural, low-income populations are adversely effected.
The bill, which they mentioned was budget-neutral, would require CMS to account for patients’ socioeconomic status when determining penalties for readmissions.
“We need to continue to hold our hospitals accountable for the quality of care they provide to Medicare patients, but we can’t let differences in income serve as an obstacle to improving health outcomes,” Senator Manchin said. “Hospitals serving disproportionate numbers of disadvantaged, low-income patients have higher rates of readmissions, even when those hospitals provide high-quality, patient-focused care.”
The American Hospital Association, America’s Essential Hospitals and the Association of American Medical Colleges have endorsed the bill, which is known as the Establishing Beneficiary Equity in the Hospital Readmission Program Act.
“America’s hospitals are strongly committed to reducing unnecessary readmissions, but under the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program, some hospitals are unfairly penalized for factors beyond their control,” AHA executive vice president Rick Pollack said. “This legislation will improve the fairness of the program and help ensure that hospitals have the critical resources they need to care for our nation’s most vulnerable patients.”
Executive Editor
Tim Casey joined TriMed Media Group in 2015 as Executive Editor. For the previous four years, he worked as an editor and writer for HMP Communications, primarily focused on covering managed care issues and reporting from medical and health care conferences. He was also a staff reporter at the Sacramento Bee for more than four years covering professional, college and high school sports. He earned his undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Notre Dame and his MBA degree from Georgetown University.