Six Ventura County Hospitals’ Medicare Reimbursements Reduced Due To Readmission Rates
The penalties range from the 1.84 percent hit faced by Los Robles and the 1.26 percent facing St. John’s Pleasant Valley to the 0.07 percent fine on Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura.
Ventura County Star:
Six Ventura County Hospitals Penalized For Medicare Readmissions
The occasional revolving door through which older patients are readmitted within days and weeks of being discharged means six Ventura County hospitals face federal financial penalties that begin Monday. The penalties come in the form of reductions in Medicare reimbursements in a seven-year-old program run by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and designed to push hospitals to provide better followup care and reduce readmission rates. In the 2019 fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, 215 of 292 hospitals evaluated across California will be hit by penalties that can involve as much as 3 percent of Medicare fee-for-service reimbursements, according to an analysis by Kaiser Health News. (Kisken, 9/30)
In other news from across the state —
East Bay Times:
Valley Med Chief Psychiatrist Awarded $1.5 Million In Damages For Wrongful Termination
A chief psychiatrist who was fired from his job at Valley Medical Center four years ago was awarded $1.5 million in damages this week for wrongful termination, according to a firm representing his attorneys. Dr. Jan Weber, who headed the hospital’s child and adolescent psychiatry division for five-and-a-half years, was let go by the county in late 2014 upon complaining about unsafe work conditions and young patients at the facility receiving substandard care over a five-year span. At the time, the 49-year-old Weber was tasked with supervising roughly eight psychiatrists in the mental health department. (Sarwari, 9/28)