Hospitals Get Low Grades and Lose Funding

City hospitals have been measured, weighed and found wanting. New York’s medical centers earned low marks on quality of care, patient satisfaction and the rate of reentry in preliminary data as judged by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, reports the New York World. The resulting penalties could add up to millions of dollars of lost funding city-wide and hundreds of thousands lost at individual hospitals.

The penalties can take away up to 2% of a hospital’s Medicare reimbursements. Up to 1% will depend on readmission rates over three years versus national averages. The other 1% depends on quality of care and patient satisfaction, as weighed against a hospital’s own history and national average.

With just below a 1% average penalty, New York City fared considerably worse than other big cities. Local hospitals such as Maimonides and and Methodist fared exceptionally poorly during the two-year grading process.

Maimonides Medical Center could lose 1.47% of its Medicare reimbursements. The national average penalty is 0.28% and the city average is just below 1%. Only 56% of patients recommended the hospital versus a 70% national average.

Methodist Hospital may incur a 1.27% penalty and earned recommendations from 63% of patients.

Kings County Hospital Center could lose .80% and earned 64% recommendations.

The goal of the system is to reward high-quality care, said U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and to reward hospitals who keep all patients healthy.

You can look up hospital grades using this tool from the New York World. Do these grades match your (hopefully limited) hospital experience?

Photo: Jim Henderson