WakeMed Health & Hospitals, a major area employer that faces its first financial loss in years, will be dinged about $650,000 by Medicare because too many patients treated at WakeMed were back in the hospital within 30 days after being discharged. WakeMed is among a number of Triangle hospitals that will have to pay a Medicare penalty for excessive readmissions, but only two of those hospitals saw their excessive readmissions increase from a year earlier: WakeMed in Raleigh and Johnston Memorial Hospital. The readmission penalty will cost 2,225 hospitals nationwide about $277 million in the coming year in reduced Medicare payments, according to an analysis of federal data by Kaiser Health News
