The tendency of government to impose crude performance metrics on hospitals is a well known phenomenon, but its use is growing as jurisdictions look for ways to cut their budgets. The latest example is found in Massachusetts.
As reported by the MA Hospital Association:
Governor Deval Patrick’s FY2013 state budget proposal includes $40 million in rate cuts for hospitals. A significant portion of these cuts would be made through highly questionable policy changes. One of the more troubling policies would double penalties on hospitals for re-admissions that occurred in 2010.
The 2012 MassHealth acute hospital RFA – the main contract between the state and hospitals serving Medicaid patients — introduced a new preventable readmission penalty for hospitals that MassHealth determined had higher-than-expected preventable readmission rates.
Inpatient payment rates for 24 hospitals were reduced by 2.2% in FY2012. Now the administration is proposing to double the penalty to 4.4% in FY2013. There are so many things wrong with this. First, as I have reported in the past:
Even if the readmission rate is the right metric to use for comparison purposes, we don’t have a model that would accurately compare one hospital to the others. This suggests that the time is not ripe to use this measure for financial incentives or penalties. It might give the impression of precision, but it is not, in fact, analytically rigorous enough for regulatory purposes.