New Medicare and Medicaid Study Findings Recently Were Reported by Researchers at RAND (Understanding The Role Played By Medicare’s Patient…

Insurance Weekly News

New Medicare and Medicaid Study Findings Recently Were Reported by Researchers at RAND (Understanding The Role Played By Medicare's Patient Experience Points System In Hospital Reimbursement)

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Weekly News -- Current study results on Medicare and Medicaid have been published. According to news reporting from Santa Monica, California, by VerticalNews journalists, research stated, "In 2015 the Medicare Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) program paid hospitals $1.4 billion in performance-based incentives; 30 percent of a hospital's VBP Total Performance Score was based on performance on Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) measures of the patient experience of care. Hospitals receive patient experience points based on three components: achievement, improvement, and consistency."

The news correspondents obtained a quote from the research from RAND, "For 2015 we examined how the three components affected reimbursement for 3,152 hospitals, including their impact on low-performing and high-minority hospitals. Achievement accounted for 96 percent of the differences among hospitals in total HCAHPS points. Although achievement had the biggest influence on payments, payments related to improvement and consistency were more beneficial for low-performing hospitals that disproportionately served minority patients. The findings highlight the important inducement that paying for improvement provides to initially low-performing hospitals to improve care and the role this incentive structure plays in minimizing resource redistributions away from hospitals serving minority populations."

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: "Additional emphasis on improvement points could benefit hospitals serving disadvantaged patients."

For more information on this research see: Understanding The Role Played By Medicare's Patient Experience Points System In Hospital Reimbursement. Health Affairs, 2016;35(9):1673-1680. Health Affairs can be contacted at: Project Hope, 7500 Old Georgetown Rd, Ste 600, Bethesda, MD 20814-6133, USA.

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting M.N. Elliott, RAND Corp, Hlth, Santa Monica, CA 90401, United States. Additional authors for this research include M.K. Beckett, W.G. Lehrman, P. Cleary, C.W. Cohea, L.A. Giordano, E.H. Goldstein and C.L. Damberg.

Keywords for this news article include: Santa Monica, California, United States, North and Central America, Medicare and Medicaid, Health Policy, Medicare, Hospital, RAND.