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The government expected accountable care organizations to save Medicare millions by now, but the program is falling short of targets, records show. KHN also has performance data for all 353 ACOs in 2014.
The newest research goes against a variety of studies that have shown these facilities owned by physicians take some of the most profitable patients while leaving other hospitals with more complex and costly cases.
Infected patients often move from hospitals to nursing homes and long-term care facilities, and coordination could help keep those infections from spreading.
The fines, in their fourth year, are assessed on hospitals that have patients frequently return and will cost nearly 2,600 hospitals $420 million in total.
Kaiser Health News lists the 239 home health agencies that received Medicare's highest rating of five stars.
KHN also lists the six home health agencies that received Medicare's lowest rating of one star and the 195 agencies rated one and a half stars. These ratings, released July 2015, are based on performance from fall 2013 through last year.
For the first time, the government is assigning one to five stars to the agencies that care for seniors in their homes. Nearly half of 9,000 agencies rated captured average scores.
Among the challenges for these online exchanges set up by the health law are attracting more customers, keeping consumers’ health costs affordable and quality high, and finding enough financing.
Despite frequent fears in communities when losing their hospitals, mortality rates do not rise, say Harvard researchers who examined 194 closures.
Federal officials release data showing prescription histories of hundreds of thousands of doctors and identifying the most common and costly drugs.
Despite the federal government’s push to make more information available to consumers, two out of three people say it is still difficult to find out how much a doctor or hospital charges for a specific procedure or treatment, according to a new poll.
The ratings, posted on Medicare’s website Thursday, rank hospitals based on patient reviews.
More than 300 large medical groups are being penalized because they did not score well on quality measures or didn’t report their efforts to the government. The incentives will soon expand to all doctors who treat Medicare patients.
Pleasing patients has become more important to hospitals as Medicare takes consumers views into account when setting payments. Most hospitals are getting better, but others have not improved since the government started publishing ratings six years ago.
A study at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins finds that patients in older buildings rate their care about the same as those in a sleek new hospital tower.
The lethal infection is one of three that the CDC says urgently require close monitoring and prevention to halt their spread.
Confusion about federal assistance stymied many from getting insurance in the first year of the health law marketplaces.
As part of their effort to improve quality while cutting costs, federal officials announced Monday that they want programs such as accountable care organizations and bundled care to account for 50 percent of traditional Medicare spending by the end of 2018.
Penalties for readmissions and patient injuries erase bonuses hospitals earn for meeting stiff quality criteria. Fewer than 800 will end up with higher payments.
A look at the 10 least and 10 most expensive places for health insurance shows a wide gap in prices for the same type of coverage.
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