The healthcare industry is a major component of the Ohio economy, from employment to innovation. Recently, though, some hospitals in Ohio have received a mixture of positive and negative news. Some hospitals have received glowing recommendations from the healthcare website Healthgrades while other facilities were penalized by Medicare due to safety issues related to patient injuries and infections.
Healthgrades Best Hospitals:
The list of hospitals that Healthgrades creates is based on clinical quality outcomes for 32 separate conditions and procedures. These rankings reward hospitals that consistently exhibit exceptional, comprehensive quality care for their patients. Healthgrades states that their list displays where patients are more likely to receive a successful healthcare treatment without experiencing major complications. They argue that this means patients have a lower chance of dying at the hospitals named in their America’s best hospitals list.
Healthgrades released its annual America’s Best Hospitals, with the company opting to release one consolidated list instead of two awards. In previous years, the company had released the Healthgrades “Distinguished Hospital Award for Clinical Excellence” (representing the top 250 hospitals in the U.S.) as well as America’s 50 and 100 Best Hospitals.
Now the hospital lists are composed of three general categories based on percentages. America’s 50 Best Hospitals™ are considered in the top 1% of hospitals in the nation for consistently providing overall clinical excellence across a broad spectrum of conditions and procedures year over year. America’s 100 Best Hospitals™ are based on the top 2% of hospitals in the nation for exhibiting clinical excellence year over year. Finally, America’s 250 Best Hospitals™ are based on the top 5% in the nation for overall clinical excellence for the current year.
In Ohio:
The following hospitals were considered by Healthgrades to be part of their America’s 50 best hospitals list. The list is made up of the top 1% of hospitals in the nation that consistently provides clinical excellence across a broad spectrum of conditions and procedures year over year. Bethesda North Hospital in Cincinnati had ratings that stated that patients would definitely recommend the healthcare facility. This was 7% higher than the national average from Healthgrades.
For Christ Hospital, also in Cincinnati, the rating was 15% of patients would definitely recommend the hospital. This was 15% higher than the national average. At ProMedica Toledo Hospital, their Healthgrades rating was equal to the national average. The complete list is available at Healthgrades: Americas Best Hospitals for 2019.
Interestingly, the only other neighboring states that had hospitals which made the top 1% list were located in Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Top 1% Michigan health systems:
- Beaumont Hospital-Troy (Troy)
- Providence-Providence Park Hospital, Southfield Campus (Novi)
- Spectrum Health Medical Center-Butterworth Hospital (Grand Rapids)
- Spectrum Health-Blodgett Hospital (Grand Rapids)
Top 1% Pennsylvania health systems:
- Lancaster General Hospital (Lancaster)
- Lankenau Medical Center (Wynnewood)
- Thomas Jefferson University Hospital (Philadelphia)
- Jefferson Hospital for Neuroscience (Philadelphia)
- Jefferson Methodist Hospital (Philadelphia)
Medicare Penalizes over 800 hospitals for Safety Issues:
On a more negative note, the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will reduce reimbursements to 800 separate hospitals and health systems in the fiscal year 2019. This comes on the heels of other federal requirements that went into effect this year.
The reduced payments from Medicare are based on higher rates of patient injuries and infections at these healthcare facilities. Eight-hundred hospitals will have their Medicare payments reduced for patients discharged between last October and this September, according to Kaiser Health News. The financial penalty is applied as hospitals submit claims to Medicare for reimbursement.
The CMS policy known as the Hospital Acquired Conditions Reduction Program was first created as part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The goal of the program is to prevent harm to patients by providing a financial incentive for hospitals to reduce hospital-acquired conditions. The program assigns a total score to a hospital based on data from six quality control measures.
The federal government reduces payments to hospitals that have high rates of readmissions as well as those with the highest numbers of infections and patient injuries. Every year the Department of Medicare reduces reimbursements by 1 percent for hospitals that fall in the worst-performing quartile.
However, the hospital industry has argued that the methodology used for the Hospital Acquired Conditions Reduction Program does not recognize improvements in the data. This means that roughly 700 to 800 hospitals will lose money every year even if they improve their overall safety records.
Critics of the program also argue that hospitals that do the best job of testing for infections may appear among the worst based on statistics. Yet, other health systems that perform less-thorough data collection may appear better when Medicare analyzes their information. For the fiscal year 2019, there were 110 hospitals that were financially penalized for the 5th year in a row.
For the fiscal year 2019, there were 20 hospitals in Ohio that were all penalized by Medicare due to excessive hospital-acquired conditions:
- University Hospitals Samaritan Medical Center (Ashland)
- Cleveland Clinic Avon Hospital (Avon)
- Soin Medical Center (Beaver Creek)
- Wood County Hospital (Bowling Green)
- University of Cincinnati Medical Center, LLC (Cincinnati)
- Mercer County Joint Township Community Hospital (Coldwater)
- Grant Medical Center (Columbus)
- Mount Carmel West (Columbus)
- The Woods at Parkside (Columbus)
- Lake Health (Concord)
- Metrohealth System (Cleveland)
- St Vincent Charity Medical Center (Cleveland)
- Marymount Hospital (Garfield Heights)
- Marietta Memorial Hospital (Marietta)
- Mount Carmel New Albany Surgical Hospital (New Albany)
- University Hospitals Portage Medical Center (Ravenna)
- UHHS Richmond Heights Hospital (Richmond Heights)
- University of Toledo Medical Center (Toledo)
- West Chester Hospital, LLC (West Chester)
- Genesis Hospital (Zanesville)
About Us:
A medical practice or healthcare facility will run more efficiently if they focus on their strengths. This is accomplished by streamlining daily workflows and allowing healthcare professionals to focus on providing quality care to their patients.
As a medical billing company, ABCS RCM provides expanded service offerings and can create a revenue cycle management solution that is tailored to the unique needs of medical practices and healthcare agencies.
Follow ABCS RCM on Twitter:
#medicalbillinghelp #healthcaretrends #Cardiology #medicalbilling #credentialinghelp #Ohiomedicalbilling #ltachbilling #BundledPayments
#PHPbilling
Hospital Acquired Conditions Reduction Program, Medicare