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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.
The plan takes into account feedback from 60 individuals and 150 organizations.
Healthcare is top of mind for U.S. voters, with worries ranging from the fate of the Affordable Care Act to the out-of-pocket burden patients face in seeking medical care, according to a Kaiser Health Tracking Poll that examined the role of healthcare issues in the presidential election.
Community Health Systems' long-awaited spin-off of its rural health business into Quorum Health Corp. wrapped up on Friday. Quorum is now an independent public company, trading under the QHC ticker symbol on the New York Stock Exchange.
Proposed regulations released last week by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are raising concerns that the playing field is uneven, with 87 percent of solo practitioners getting penalized and 81 percent of clinicians in large groups earning bonuses, according to some estimates.
Experts say patient portals can offer financial benefits that improve collections, reduce staff workload and better engage patients.
A recent survey from the market research firm has found that that 87 percent of financially struggling hospitals now regret changing their EHR systems due to higher than expected costs, layoffs, declining inpatient revenues, disenfranchised clinicians and doubts over the benefits of switching systems.
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.
In the 2017 open enrollment period, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will pilot a program on Healthcare.gov to pair results of a 5-star care rating with health plans on the federal marketplace.