According to new federal data, 85 percent of hospitals in Georgia are set to receive Medicare penalties.
The penalties will affect hospitals who have had too many Medicare patients come back for treatment within a month of being discharged from the hospital. These discharge penalties come as a result of the Affordable Care Act which, as Georgia Health News Reports, has brought greater scrutiny to the issue of patient care after discharge.
Overall, the United States government predicts that the hospital industry will lose $566 million over the next 12 months as a result of these penalties. The worst penalty is a 3 percent lower reimbursement on each discharged Medicare patient.
The penalties include Medicare patients who were discharged from one hospital and readmitted to another one less than a month later. The penalty would then apply to the first hospital.
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