As has been noted, CMS named 769 hospitals that will face Medicare payment cuts in fiscal year (FY) 2017 under the Hospital-Acquired Condition Reduction Program (HACRP), which for the first time considered rates of infection from antibiotic-resistant bacteria in its calculations. The HAC Reduction Program requires the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to adjust payments to applicable hospitals that rank in the worst-performing quartile of all subsection (d) hospitals with respect to risk-adjusted HAC quality measures. These hospitals will have their payments reduced to 99 percent of what would otherwise have been paid for such discharges. In the FY 2017, HAC Reduction Program, hospitals with a Total HAC Score greater than 6.5700 are subject to a payment reduction.
CMS on HACRP
From Modern Healthcare: “Our goal is for all hospitals to improve,” and roughly half did improve enough to escape the bottom quartile, said Dr. Patrick Conway, the CMS’ deputy administrator and chief medical officer. Federal data on quality measures released earlier this month by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality also showed that between 2010 and 2013, progress was made in reducing patient harm and preventing avoidable deaths, he said.
Reaction
The Advisory Board collected reaction from stakeholders. Some noted that hospitals cannot fully control antibiotic-resistant infections that occur in their facilities. Louise Dembry, a professor at the Yale School of Medicine and president of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, said, “The reality is we don’t know how to prevent all these infections.”
Moreover, some critics take issue with the way HACRP assesses penalties. Because the program penalizes the 25 percent of hospitals that perform worst overall, in some cases a hospital is penalized even though it has reduced its rate of avoidable complications. Nancy Foster, vice president for quality and patient safety at the American Hospital Association, said, “The HAC penalty payment program is regarded as rather arbitrary, so other than people getting upset when they incur a penalty, it is not in and of itself changing behavior”
Example from Emory
Three Emory-affiliated hospitals were fined for high rates of hospital-acquired conditions for fiscal year 2017. Emory University Hospital Midtown (EUHM) is being fined for the third consecutive fiscal year, and Emory Johns Creek Hospital (EJCH) for the second consecutive fiscal year. Emory University Hospital (EUH) is being fined for a second fiscal year, the first instance occurring in 2015.
But Emory’s response is worth considering. Director of Media Relations of Emory Healthcare Janet Christenbury wrote in a statement that the ratings inaccurately compared hospitals because they are “based on methodologies that often do not sufficiently take into account the differences in patient populations and the complexity of conditions that certain hospitals treat.”
Teaching hospitals, such as Emory’s Midtown facility, are unique because they conduct various common and complex procedures and provide clinical education and training to current and future medical providers, Christenbury said. Consequently, there is more data to report to CMS in comparison to other facilities that treat patients with limited specializations or more common conditions, Christenbury added.