Hospital to see lower Medicare reimbursement for 2013

Frontiersman.com

PALMER — Mat-Su Regional Medical Center is one of four Alaska hospitals and 2,217 nationwide that will forfeit more than $280 million in Medicare funds over the next year because too many people returned to the hospital within 30 days of release, according to Medicare.

Included in the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the penalties are part of a multi-faceted effort by Medicare to force improvements in the quality of hospital care.

In a written statement responding to the penalties, Mat-Su Regional says, “As we continue our work to reduce readmissions and to continuously build on the quality of care provided at our hospital we anticipate we will see smaller penalties and that we will also attain quality incentives.”

As a result, Medicare reports that reimbursement payments to the Palmer hospital will be reduced by .09 percent.

Thus far, Medicare has evaluated re-admissions for three years, ending in mid-2011, for heart attacks, heart failure and pneumonia.

Penalties will take the form of a reduction in regular Medicare payments to penalized hospitals over the next year.

This year, the maximum fine a hospital will receive is a 1 percent reduction in Medicare reimbursement rates, but that penalty will increase in October 2013 to 2 percent of regular payments starting and then to 3 percent the following year.

Also penalized were the Alaska Native Medical Center, 0.22 percent reduction; Central Peninsula General Hospital, 0.07 percent; and the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta Regional Hospital, 0.26 percent.