Opinion: Ignoring evidence begot Medicare’s dangerous hospital readmissions penalty
Federal programs designed to cut costs and improve health by penalizing doctors and hospitals are failing at an alarming rate. Some of them actually harm patients, and many don’t cut costs. One in particular, the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP), may have caused thousands of deaths instead of preventing them, and probably hasn’t saved money during its seven years in operation.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services began reviewing the safety of this program on Jan. 19. It shouldn’t take CMS nearly four months to err on the side of caution and pull the plug on it.
The HRRP was imposed upon Medicare by the Affordable Care Act. Its goal makes sense: reduce the number of patients readmitted to hospitals soon after being discharged. But its approach — penalizing hospitals millions of dollars if their rate of readmissions within 30
