Medicare has stepped up the top rate of pay cuts for hospitals that have high readmission rates, Kaiser Health News reports. In Florida, about four out of five hospitals will have a penalty in their Medicare reimbursement rate. The average penalty across the state was 0.35 percent, which means about one-third of one percent of their Medicare payments will be withheld in the coming year.
Eighty-one Florida hospitals will be penalized less in 2014 than in 2013. The pay cut will increase at 65 hospitals.
Shands Hospital at the University of Florida is the only hospital that was penalized last year that didn’t see its penalty change -- it will stay at .20 percent. Twenty Florida hospitals that didn’t face a penalty last year also won’t be penalized this year.
Readmissions penalty data for all Florida hospitals is available here.
No Florida hospitals got the maximum penalty of 2 percent.