Half of U.S. teaching hospitals are being penalized by Medicare for high rates of infection and medical errors, according to NPR.
Medicare will withhold a total of $373 million in penalties from 721 hospitals nationwide, according to the report. PPACA calls for Medicare to fine hospitals with the worst rates of hospital acquired conditions. This year some hospitals may lose up to 5 percent of Medicare reimbursements.
Some of the country's more prominent teaching hospitals are facing penalties, as well. Those that will forfeit 1 percent of Medicare payments through Septemeber include: Intermountain Medical Center in Murray, Utah, Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, Cleveland Clinic, Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, Pa., Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, NYU Langone Medical Center in New York and Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, according to the report.
HAC penalties take hospital type, patient acuity, age and other factors into account. However, 32 percent of hospitals with the sickest patients were penalized while only 12 percent of hospitals with the least complex cases were punished, according to a study by Ashish Jha, MD, MHA, and professor at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Many academic hospitals believe the HAC penalties don't account enough for the complex cases they take on, according to the report.
"I've worked in community hospitals. I've worked in teaching hospitals. My personal experience is teaching hospitals are at least as safe if not safer," Dr. Jha told NPR. "But they take care of sicker populations and more complex cases that are going to have more complications. The HAC penalty program is really a teaching-hospital penalty program."
More articles on integration and physician issues:
8 specialties with the most female residents
Physicians least likely to think healthcare on the right track, survey shows