Kaiser Health News
The study measures how many people were hospitalized between 2002 and 2012 because they were abusing heroin or prescription painkillers, and how many of them got serious infections related to their drug use. It also tracks what hospitals charged to treat those patients and how the hospitals were paid.
The findings are based on Medicare cost reports from fiscal year 2013, analyzing almost 3,000 acute-care hospitals. About 60 percent were nonprofit, while one in four were for-profit. The rest were public, or government-owned.
The bonuses are small, generally a fraction of a percent of their Medicare payments. Nonetheless, rewarding hospitals of mediocre quality was hardly the stated goal when the Affordable Care Act created financial incentives to encourage better medical care from hospitals, doctors and other health care providers.
Between January 2010 and July 2015, the analysis found, inspectors identified 3,016 home health agencies -- nearly a quarter of all those examined by Medicare -- that had inadequately reviewed or tracked medications for new patients. In some cases, nurses failed to realize that patients were taking potentially dangerous combinations of drugs, risking abnormal heart rhythms, bleeding, kidney damage and seizures.
Currently, doctors are paid for things such as tests, treatments and other procedures, but not necessarily for spending time with patients to learn more about their health or develop a treatment plan. Officials say the new payment program will change that.
Administration officials moved Thursday to improve low Medicaid enrollment for emerging prisoners, urging states to start signups before release and expand eligibility to thousands of former inmates in halfway houses near the end of their sentences.
The results come as Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has repeatedly derided the law for including too many concessions to the private healthcare industry and costing consumers too much.
Three hospitals have pledged that they will require their surgeons and 20 affiliated hospitals to meet minimum annual thresholds for 10 high-risk procedures, and have asked other hospital networks around the country to join them.
The company's departure could be felt most acutely in several counties in Florida, Oklahoma, Kansas, North Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee that could be left with only one insurer, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
California legislators are attempting to clear the way for undocumented immigrants to buy health insurance through the state's insurance exchange -- potentially setting a national precedent.