“The important reforms to Medicare’s readmissions penalties, as advanced by Representatives Tiberi and McDermott, will enable Medicare to continue reducing readmission rates, while addressing disproportionate and biased penalties against providers serving lower-income populations.
“Improving health care affordability requires improving the value of care delivered—especially in the communities and populations where costly chronic conditions are more prevalent. But it is a fact, documented by MedPAC and peer-reviewed studies, that HRRP’s current methodology penalizes providers serving lower-income patients, draining resources from the places that need them most. In the long-run, continuation of that methodology would generate higher rather than lower cost of care for those patients.”
See full press release: https://www.nchc.org/nchc-praises-reforms-to-hospital-readmissions-policy/