In a recent announcement from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), hospitals around the United States will be facing a financial penalty from the agency after failing to bring down their rates of
hospital-acquired infections.
In a 2014
study published in the
New England Journal of Medicine, researchers found that nearly 722,000 healthcare-associated infections occurred in US hospitals in 2011, and that an estimated 75,000 of those patients died while hospitalized. The infections included
pneumonia, gastrointestinal illnesses, urinary tract infections, primary bloodstream infections, surgical site infections, and others acquired by patients during hospital stays. More recently, a
Consumer Reports study gave low marks to a number of US hospitals after they reported rates of
Clostridium difficile infections higher than the national benchmark. Despite these figures, a recent
report from the US Department of Health and Human Services announced a 21% decline in hospital-acquired infections from 2010 to 2015.
Hospital infections continue to persist and affect the health of patients; however, and in response the
Hospital-Acquired Condition (HAC) Reduction Program became effective in 2015 through Section 3008 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). Under the program, US hospitals are subject to penalties in the form of Medicare reimbursement reductions based on how they score on rates of hospital-acquired infections. The scores are based on six quality measures from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s Patient Safety Indicators 90 Composite, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Healthcare Safety Network for central line-associated bloodstream infections, catheter-associated urinary tract infections, and surgical site infections, methicillin-resistant
Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia, and
Clostridium difficile infection measures. Hospitals with the lowest ranking under these measures–those with a total HAC Score above the 75th percentile–are subject to having their Medicare payments reduced by 1%.
The recent announcement from CMS looked at rankings for
more than 3,300 US hospitals around the country, with
769 hospitals receiving federal reimbursement reductions due to high rates of patient infections in their facilities. As of yet, CMS officials have not released estimates on the total amount of funding reduced by the recent penalizations. Under the recent ratings, eight
Utah hospitals face penalties, including the Intermountain Medical Center, which received $966.3 million in patient service revenue from
Medicare payments in 2015. In
Texas, a total of 61 hospitals are also losing Medicare funding for 2017 after receiving low scores on their number of hospital-acquired infections.
