Obamacare Fines Kick in for Hospitals that Readmit Sick Patients

WHAT.  THE.  HECK??

Readmission within 24 hours is a standard quality measure.  You are not supposed to discharge people who are still so sick that they will need hospital care again that soon. But thirty days?  When you consider the frail state of health of many elderly people, thirty days just makes no sense.  If hospitals could charge for each day a patient is in the hospital, this would make them keep people way longer than they should,  keeping them from time at home with their families.  But there is that other rule of hospital payment, the “DRG” or “Diagnostic related group”  which allows reimbursement for only so many days for a diagnosis.  Simple pneumonia 4 days, complicated pneumonia 7 days.  A patient only gets to be admitted under ONE diagnosis, and that is what the hospital gets paid for.  Yet elderly people seldom have just one diagnosis.  There is just no way for a hospital to stay afloat with both DRGs and this 30 day rule in play.

It is like trying to give the Govt. a 30 day warranty that your old jalopy will hold together at least 30 days before something else breaks.

It’s part of the plan.  If Obammacare sticks around, eventually there will be a panel that determines when patients will be euthanized because it just costs too much too care for them.  The next step beyond that is when people who do not have the money or political clout will be euthanized because they are too old and present a <u>potential</u>, but not necessarily actual burden, on the health care system.

Seems to me there are two simple rules

1 - don’t admit patients unless they are going to die while still in the hospital
or
2 - don’t admit patients who are actually sick

then you can get paid without the risk

If you violate one of the above - treat every patient as the worst case senario and keep them as long as you possibly can…..then follow the rules above

49% of hospitals are running in the red.  This should kill off many more.  There is no patient compliance factor in all this.  My hospital friends tell me they have a patient who has chronic heart failure that has had 22 admissions in seven months.  They get her out of failure and discharge her.  She never sees a doctor after and never fills her perscriptions.  Three or four days later she comes to the emergency room back in failure.  By law they can not turn her away and must readmit her.  She has no cost or responsibility.  I don’t know what they can do about this but close down. 
    The doctors say they have been notified that next year they will be monitored in their offices (thanks to electronic records) about their success in treating diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease.  If they don’t controll these diseases then ALL their medicare/medicaid fees will be fined 5%.  So now they are firing all noncompliant patients and no one else will take them.  So they will just go to the hospital and move in. 
    But this is what the people voted for so I guess they will be happy.  GRrrrrr!!!!!

In the last few months of my father’s life, he was admitted to the hospital about 5 times - all from some complication or other related to the cancer that was killing him. 

The times “between” that he was able to be at home were precious to all of us.  Some members just couldn’t make it to the hospital for “visits”, and the cost of keeping him there would have been astronomical - paid for by Medicare, of course.  I have no problem with Medicare covering his expenses - he had been paying into it since Day One.  I would have had a problem if there was not a hospital or doctor that was willing to admit him all those times - either for excessive pain, or the time he got confused and doubled up on his heart meds, or when he just couldn’t remember where he was.  He needed to be “re-admitted”, and no-one should pay a penalty for that kind of care.

The problem with Obamacare is, (as we have said along), that it was written by bureaucrats with no eye for the future or the results of their actions (sounds like a bunch of teenagers).  The joke on them is that the only hospitals that will continue to operate will be the charitable hospitals (like the Catholics?), and they’re being regulated out of existence.  They’re afraid of back-alley abortions?  They’re going to start dealing with people going to see the local grandmas and witch-doctors and snake-oil salesmen, because there will be no doctors willing to put up with this garbage.

A nephew of mine, who has cystic fibrosis, was admitted to the hospital with pneumonia. After his pneumonia was treated, the doctors wanted to keep him in the hospital to protect him from new infections while he was on the waiting list for a lung transplant. They were forced to discharge him. (He is still waiting for new lungs). So if he gets sick again within 30 days - I guess it will be “take two tylenol and call us?”

Huh. His mom is a fervent Democrat. This should teach her the error of her ways.

Based on “the law of unintended consequences” I expect this will simply force hospitals to deny admission to patients within that 30 day window.  Just another example of what kind of idiots we are actually electing to run our government…..  We desperately need to vote ALL of them out and start fresh.  Sadly, our system preserves the status quo.

Just a little preview of the death panels.  Obamacurse can’t be repealed fast enough.