1,800 hospitals will see value-based purchasing bonuses in fiscal 2016

Medicare will reward more hospitals than it will penalize in fiscal 2016 under its value-based purchasing program, the CMS said Monday.About 1,800 hospitals will see positive payment adjustments the CMS said. The changes in base DRG payments will be very small—between -0.4% and 0.4%, for about half of the more than 3,000 hospitals that are subject to the program.

Under the value-based purchasing program, the CMS imposed an across-the-board 1.75% reduction in Medicare payments (up from 1.5% for fiscal 2015) for most inpatient acute-care hospitals. The reduction created a budget-neutral bonus pool of about $1.5 billion to reward hospitals that perform well on certain metrics and patient surveys. The hospitals that performed the worst won’t see any of the reduction restored.  Read more