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Morrow County Hospital receives 5-star rating for quality
Staff Report
MOUNT GILEAD Morrow County Hospital was one of only 35 hospitals in Ohio that received a 5-star rating from CMS (The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) based on 37 measures of performance in five categories that include mortality, safety of care, readmission rates, patient experience and timely/effective care.
Hospitals report data to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services through the Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting Program, Hospital Outpatient Quality Reporting Program, Hospital Readmission Reduction Program, Hospital-Acquired Condition Reduction Program, and Hospital Value-Based Purchasing Program. Overall star ratings aren’t calculated for Veterans Health Administration or Department of Defense hospitals.
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The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has updated the Medicare fee-for-service payment rates and policies for inpatient hospitals and long-term care hospitals for 2022.
Before taking into account Medicare disproportionate share hospital payments and Medicare uncompensated care payments, the proposed increase in operating payment rates, increases in capital payments, increases in payments for new medical technologies, increases in payments due to implementation of the imputed floor and other proposed changes will increase hospital payments in FY 2022 by $3.4 billion, or 2.8%.
But there is much in the proposed rule beyond payment updates.
The proposed rule would require hospitals to report vaccination rates among healthcare staff. CMS is proposing the adoption of the COVID-19 Vaccination Coverage among Healthcare Personnel Measure to require hospitals to report COVID-19 vaccinations of workers in their facilities.
Lawrence + Memorial Hospital in New London and Westerly Hospital are facing reductions in Medicare payments because of the relatively high rates of complications their patients developed during stays between mid-2017 and mid-2019, which was long before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Backus Hospital in Norwich faces no such penalty.
All three of the hospitals serving the region will get lower reimbursements for Medicare patients in the current fiscal year based on their patient readmission rates for cases between July 2016 and June 2019.
The penalties, assessed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, were reported this week by Kaiser Health News, a nonprofit that’s been tracking Medicare’s Hospital-Acquired Condition Reduction Program and its Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program since they were instituted in connection with the Affordable Care Act.
VUMC among facilities docked for complications
This article has been updated to reflect the actual dollar amount Vanderbilt University Medical Center stands to lose from the Medicare penalty based on last year s inpatient admissions revenue.
Twenty-two hospitals across Tennessee are being penalized by Medicare for the number of complications among patients from hospital-acquired conditions and will see their reimbursement rates for the next fiscal year fall by 1 percent.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services cut payments to 774 hospitals across the United States as part of a program created under the Affordable Care Act that aims to reduce the number of hospital-acquired infections. According to