An article recently published in the Los Angeles Times states that the Obama administration has recently passed a regulation that will reward hospitals for quality care. This initiative will motivate healthcare facilities to conform to a high quality of care and service to receive more benefits from Medicare. Low scoring facilities could face a penalty in which they receive less payment from Medicare. How will this specifically impact the senior care industry? Only time will tell and Right at Home will certainly be monitoring the situation closely. A portion of the article is included below and it can be read in its entirety by clicking here.

Strategy aims to improve hospitals

The Obama administration issued a final regulation to reward hospitals that provide high-quality care, the first in a series of steps that are designed to fundamentally transform the way that the federal government pays for healthcare. Under the initiative, one of several authorized in the new healthcare law the president signed last year, Medicare will pay more to institutions that score well on a series of measures that gauge patient care and pay less to those that don’t hit the quality benchmarks. Though commonplaces in many industries, setting quality benchmarks and tying them to compensation will be new for many of the nation’s hospitals. It is a strategy that Medicare has never used before on a systematic basis. (Read More)