Bridgeport Hospital receives penalty under Medicare safety program

Bridgeport Hospital is one of 15 Connecticut hospitals ”“ and the only in Fairfield County ”“ that will lose 1 percent of its Medicare payments in 2018 due to high infection rates and injuries.

The penalties ”“ now in their fourth year ”“ were created by the Affordable Care Act to drive hospitals to improve the quality of their care.

Each year, hundreds of hospitals lose 1 percent of their Medicare payments through the Hospital-Acquired Conditions Reduction Program. The program requires Medicare to penalize the worst-performing 25 percent of the nation”™s approximately 3,300 hospitals each year, regardless of whether they have reduced their number of potentially avoidable mishaps from the previous evaluation period.

The conditions that Medicare assesses ”“ grouped together as potentially avoidable events known as hospital-acquired conditions ”“ include rates of infections from colon surgeries, hysterectomies, urinary tract catheters and central line tubes inserted into veins. The frequency of 10 types of in-hospital injuries, including bedsores, hip fractures, blood clots, sepsis and post-surgical wound ruptures, are also assessed.

This is the fourth consecutive year that Bridgeport Hospital has received the 1 percent penalty. An exact monetary figure was not available.