September 16, 2022
Providers
  • The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released preliminary data revealing that 25 percent of hospitals will not face penalties under its Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program. Additionally, 57 percent fewer hospitals will pay penalties exceeding 1 percent. This year’s higher rate of penalty-free hospitals is because the CMS made three changes to its calculation: 1) excluded claims from the first half of 2020 and instead looking at data from July 2018 to December 2019 and July 2020 to June 2021, 2) suppressed the pneumonia readmissions measure from its review and, 3) eliminated diagnosis-related group payment policy and excess readmission ratio calculations for hospitals with extraordinary circumstance exceptions. (Article here)