Obamacare rule to dock poor-performing hospitals

Regulations issued Monday under the Affordable Care Act aim to crack down on hospitals with high readmission rates and records of patients acquiring new conditions after they've been admitted for something else. Implementation of ObamaCare's Hospital Acquired Condition Reduction Program is among several provisions of a final rule updating the Medicare payment schedule for general acute care and long-term care hospitals in fiscal 2015. Under the rule, hospitals with the highest rates of hospital-acquired conditions would see their Medicare inpatient payments cut by one percent.