Nine Maryland hospitals, including five locally, are facing state financial penalties for having too many patients contracting preventable conditions such as infections, pneumonia and bed sores after being admitted.
The nine hospitals will lose a combined $2.1 million because the state will cut the amount they are allowed to charge patients, according to the state’s Health Services Cost Review Commission Web site.
The area hospitals penalized include Prince George’s Hospital Center, Washington Adventist, Shady Grove Adventist, Doctors Community and Montgomery General. Twenty-three of Maryland’s 45 hospitals included in the data have complication rates better than the state’s average and will be able to charge patients extra.
Maryland is the only state in the country that establishes hospital payment levels for all payers. The commission in 2009, seeking to link hospital rates to performance, mandated that hospitals with rates for preventable complications higher than the state average would see cuts in the amount they could raise patient prices.
The 49 types of complications reported — such as urinary tract infections, injuries from falls in the hospital and accidental cuttings during medical procedures — are not present when the patient is first admitted and not related to an existing illness, a spokesman for the commission said.
“We don’t believe all these complications are absolutely preventable,” said Dianne Feeney, associate director of quality initiatives of the commission, which sets hospital rates in Maryland. “But we believe … there is great room for improvement in these complication rates.”
Prince George’s Hospital Center in Cheverly has the worst rate of complications in the state, with more than 1,200 reported in fiscal 2010, data shows. The hospital will lose an estimated $891,000 as a result of having its hospital rates lowered 0.5 percent.
Phone calls to the Cheverly hospital were not returned Thursday. But John O’Brien, the president of the Prince George’s Hospital Center, told Kaiser Health News, which first reported the story, that there is “no reason for people to be concerned about the quality of care they receive in this hospital.” O’Brien also said there is “vastly lower rate of complication than what we report.”
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