Jordan Rau - KFF Health News
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Faced with a slow rollout of the updated vaccines and without state mandates for workers to get vaccinated, most skilled facilities are relying on persuasion to boost vaccination rates among staff and residents.
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After the nursing home where Leann Sample worked was bought by private investors, it started falling apart. Literally. But the owners of the facility were making huge profits.
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Federal officials said they are penalizing 2,273 hospitals, the fewest since the fiscal year that ended in September 2014. Driving the decline was a change in the formula to compensate for the chaos caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The president wants to set minimum staffing levels for the beleaguered nursing home industry. But, given a lack of transparency surrounding industry’s finances, it’s a mystery how facilities will shoulder the costs.
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Among the 764 hospitals hit with a 1% reduction in payments for having high numbers of infections and avoidable complications are more than three dozen Medicare ranks among the nation's best.
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The federal penalty program finishes its first decade by lowering payments to nearly half the nation’s hospitals for readmitting too many Medicare patients within a month. Penalties are credited with helping reduce the number of patients returning for another Medicare stay within 30 days.
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Nursing home operators acknowledge that large numbers of staff members are not getting the shots but fear a federal vaccination mandate could drive away workers in a tight labor market.
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A Kaiser Family Foundation poll finds two-thirds of parents support mandating masks for unvaccinated students, but resistance to vaccinating remains high. “My child is not a test dummy,” one parent says.
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Those hospitals, which include several in Florida and some of the nation’s marquee medical centers, will lose 1% of their Medicare payments over 12 months.
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The penalties are the ninth round of a program created as part of the ACA's broader effort to improve quality and lower costs.