The Texas Tribune recently reported the federal government is working to pay for better performance, and penalizing hospitals that have the highest rates of Medicare patients who are readmitted within 30 days of receiving treatment for heart failure, heart attacks, or pneumonia. As part of the Affordable Care Act, hospitals can be penalized up to 1% of Medicare payment rates for all procedures this year, and up to 2% next.
These are the penalized hospitals in the High Plains Public Radio listening region:
Colorado:
Keefe Memorial Hospital in Cheyenne Wells at the maximum rate of 1.00%.
Kansas:
Bob Wilson Memorial Grant County Hospital in Ulysses at a rate of 0.74%.
Hays Medical Center in Hays at a rate of 0.05%
Morton County Hospital in Elkhart at a rate of 1.00%.
Southwest Medical Center in Liberal at a rate of 0.31%.
Western Plains Medical Complex in Dodge City at a rate of 0.10%.
Oklahoma:
Memorial Hospital of Texas County in Guymon at a rate of 0.30%
Texas:
Childress Regional Medical Center in Childress at a rate of .028%
Pampa Regional Medical Center in Pampa at a rate of 0.41%
A complete listing of all penalized hospitals from Kaiser Health News can be found here. If you’d like to compare hospitals across the state of Texas, The Texas Tribune compiled data into an interactive chart using the Kaiser Health News data.