The federal government is cutting some funding to 721 hospitals around the nation, including the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP), due to high rates of infection and patient injuries.
The new policies, which will be accessed via a cut in Medicare payments, will affect those 721 hospitals through the end of this fiscal year, which ends in September 2015. According to NBC 10's report, one out of every seven hospitals in the nation are being penalized via a one percent reduction in Medicare payments.
According to federal reports, there had been a reduction in avoidable errors from 2010 to 2013, but there was still a high frequency of avoidable complications. Since many hospitals were improving in these measures, some see the penalties as counterproductive.
“Hospitals may be penalized on things they are getting safer on, and that sends a fairly mixed message,” Nancy Foster, a quality expert at the American Hospital Association, said to NBC 10.
Read more of NBC 10's report here.
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