Characteristics of hospitals penalized in HAC reduction program

Editor's Note

Among hospitals participating in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Hospital-Acquired Condition Reduction Program, those penalized the most had more quality accreditations, offered more advanced services, were major teaching institutions, and had better performance on other process and outcome measures.

The findings suggest that the approach CMS uses to assess hospitals should be reconsidered to make sure the program accurately measures quality and fairly penalizes hospitals, the authors say. 

Importance In fiscal year (FY) 2015, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) instituted the Hospital-Acquired Condition (HAC) Reduction Program, which reduces payments to the lowest-performing hospitals. However, it is uncertain whether this program accurately measures quality and fairly penalizes hospitals.