1,700 hospitals win quality bonuses from Medicare, but most will never collect

Medicare is giving bonuses to a majority of hospitals that it graded on quality, but many of those rewards will be wiped out by penalties the government has issued for other shortcomings, federal data show. As required by the 2010 health law, the government is taking performance into account when paying hospitals, one of the biggest changes in Medicare's 50-year-history. This year 1,700 hospitals – 55 percent of those graded – earned higher payments for providing comparatively good care in the federal government's most comprehensive review of quality. The government measured criteria such as patient satisfaction, lower death rates and how much patients cost Medicare.