Medicare revises readmissions penalties, again

In its effort to crack down on repeat hospitalizations, Medicare has its own readmission: for the second time in six months, it has erred in calculating penalties for more than 1,000 of the nation's hospitals. As a result, Medicare has slightly lessened its readmissions penalties for 1,246 hospitals as part of its new program pressuring hospitals to ensure patients stay healthy health after they leave. St. Claire Regional Medical Center in Morehead, Ky., is seeing its penalty drop the most, from 0.93 percent to 0.72 percent of every payment Medicare makes for a patient during the fiscal year that ends in September, according to a Kaiser Health News analysis of the new data, which Medicare published on its website.