Federal well being officers don’t inform customers about extreme security violations in hospitals specializing in bodily rehabilitation. Nor does Medicare impose fines because it does for nursing houses, or present easy-to-understand five-star scores because it does for normal hospitals, in keeping with an investigation by KFF Well being Information and The New York Occasions.
Medical rehab hospitals have turn out to be a extremely profitable area of interest inside the well being care trade, collectively producing earnings of 10%, greater than normal hospitals, which earn about 6%, and excess of expert nursing houses, which make lower than 0.5%, in keeping with the newest knowledge from the Medicare Fee Advisory Fee, an unbiased congressional company often called MedPAC.
However MedPAC and unbiased researchers have discovered that for-profit rehabs are likely to have greater charges of sufferers being readmitted to normal hospitals than nonprofits do.
In 2023, stand-alone for-profit rehabilitation hospitals overtook nonprofits because the locations the place most annual affected person admissions happen, a KFF Well being Information and New York Occasions evaluation discovered. These amenities are required to offer three hours of bodily, occupational, or speech remedy a day, 5 days per week.
Congress has not licensed Medicare to advantageous rehab hospitals for violations uncovered throughout inspections, even ones that resulted in dying, because it has finished with practically 8,000 nursing houses over the past three years, imposing common fines of about $28,000.
The one possibility is to completely minimize off a rehab hospital’s reimbursement for all providers by Medicare and Medicaid, which cowl most sufferers. That step would more than likely put it out of enterprise and is sort of by no means used. Even probably the most critical violations successfully carry no punishments as long as the hospital places steps in place to avert future issues.
The federal authorities’s total high quality oversight efforts are restricted. Medicare docks fee to rehab amenities for sufferers readmitted to a normal hospital throughout shorter-than-average rehab stays, however in contrast to at normal hospitals, there are not any monetary penalties when just lately discharged rehab sufferers are hospitalized for crucial well being points.
The Biden administration introduced final 12 months it supposed to develop a score scale of 1 to five stars for rehab amenities on its Care Examine web site. The trade’s commerce affiliation, the American Medical Rehabilitation Suppliers Affiliation, requested a delay within the creation of star scores till the present high quality measures have been refined. The Trump administration has not decided whether or not it should proceed the trouble to fee rehab amenities.
Additionally learn our shopper information to discovering the suitable place to get bodily, occupational or speech remedy.
