I Don’t Have Any Faith in This System
Medicare on Thursday disclosed bonuses and penalties for nearly 3,000 hospitals as it ties almost $1 billion in payments to the quality of care provided to patients. New York-Presbyterian in Manhattan and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston will get paid less by Medicare. The Cleveland Clinic and Intermountain Medical Center in Utah will be paid more. Kaiser Health News reports:
Results for hospitals within the same system often varied. For instance, in Rochester, Minn., the Mayo Clinic’s Methodist Hospital will be getting a bonus. But Mayo’s flagship St. Mary’s Hospital, also in Rochester, will be losing money. Dr. Michael Rock, an orthopedic surgeon at the Mayo Clinic, said that Medicare’s scoring system tends to favor hospitals with patients like those at Methodist, which primarily does elective surgeries, over hospitals with lots of trauma and emergency cases, which St. Mary’s handles.
Of course places with elective surgeries are going to beat out trauma hospitals.
Government picking winners, ugh.
I’m moving to a country with a big beach and a small government.
“Seventy percent of the scores are based on how frequently hospitals followed 12 basic clinical standards of care, such as controlling heart surgery patients’ blood sugar levels and giving them beta blockers to lower their blood pressure. The other 30 percent is determined by how well hospitals were rated by former patients in surveys asking about the communication and responsiveness of doctors and nurses and the cleanliness and quietness of their environment.”
“Harold Miller, a health care expert in Pittsburgh, said, ‘It doesn’t fix the underlying problem, which is fee for service.'”
This isn’t surprising considering the price disparities of care between different clinics in the same city. Especially true for non-cosmetic surgical procedures.
there must be a way for Medicare to take into account the type of procedures that the hospitals does a lot of and make sure it is not penalizing a hospital like St. Mary’s Hospital
Where is this haven you speak of? Can I come too??