The Times finally got around to writing a piece about our county hospital and the failing grade that the folks at Medicare gave them.
Some of you might not have emerged from the fog caused by the new year celebrations so let us help translate the article.
You should be able to see what is coming when you read the sub-title of the article:
“UMC officials say penalty may reflect challenge of treating the unisured and very ill”– In other words UMC is different than other hospitals. Our patients are sick, they are dirty, they are poor.
Then the damage control continues:
“University Medical Center officials, who were notified last week about the penalty related to “hospital-acquired conditions,” on Monday confirmed that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reduction will amount to 1 percent of the hospital’s total Medicare payment for fiscal year 2014-2015, which began Oct. 1.”– We didn’t know about this when we gave out those bonuses earlier this year although the report is for problems that occurred last year.
“We may appeal the penalty once we complete the review,” said Javier Gonzalez, UMC’s director of quality management. “This is a new program, and this has never happened before.”– This isn’t fair, we didn’t know that we were supposed to make patients well, not make them sicker.
“UMC officials said they believe the penalty may reflect the kind of patients that the teaching hospital is likely to treat.”– Only really horrible people go to teaching hospitals.
“They’re so sick when they come to us that they require prolonged hospitalizations, which studies have shown can lead to hospital-acquired infections or conditions (HAC’s),” Garcia said. “Our trauma patients arrive with deep wounds, multiple fractures, and they might develop blood clots and require multiple surgeries.”– We don’t know what to do. How did the other thousands of hospitals in the study avoid these problems? Bellevue in New York received a passing grade.
“UMC officials said the Medicare penalty involved potentially 18 out of 33,598 patients between January 2012 and December 2013 that reportedly developed serious complications.”– We didn’t hurt that many people.
“Garcia said that UMC will review the concerns that federal regulators identified to determine if there are any root causes that the hospital needs to address, such as staff training to include nurses and doctors.”– We might not change anything, this will probably blow over. Besides we can always make up for the revenue loss by raising taxes.
“Gonzalez said, “We will continue to deliver unparalleled care and remarkable patient outcomes.””– Please don’t continue. Unparalleled? Remarkable? Being one of only a dozen or so hospitals out of thousands to receive the worst possible score is certainly unparalleled and remarkable.
“Lorena Navedo, UMC executive chief of staff, said the American Hospital Association and Dr. Ashish Jha, an expert at the Harvard School of Public Health, assert that teaching hospitals and others hospitals that treat the sickest patients were disproportionately hit with Medicare penalties for HAC’s.”– Our doctors are just trainees, you are the one that decided to use amateurs.
“The American Hospital Association said the HAC Reduction Program is “a poorly designed policy that unfairly penalizes hospitals that care for the sickest patients,” and urged the CMS to consider changes in its scoring methods.”– There are over 1,000 teaching hospitals in the United States. Only a dozen or so hospitals scored as badly as our hospital, and not all of the dozen are teaching hospitals.
Our public relations person at the county hospital recently left. Could the Times reporter be auditioning for the job?
We deserve better
Brutus
Posted by Brutus 
elpasospeak 
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