Will Medicare's Value-based Purchasing Help Drive Accountability at Hospitals?

Boston area hospitals score 50-50 on Medicare's new program that ties payments to quality of care

Jordan Rau writes in The KHN Blog, Capsules, about a recent Kaiser Health News analysis of Medicare's new Value-Based Purchasing program that ties Medicare payments to quality of care.

The study, which included the country’s 212 major health care markets, reveals that hospitals in Fort Wayne, Ind., are faring the best on average while hospitals in Washington, D.C., are doing the worst. Interestingly, data on Boston hospitals shows 50% of hospitals getting a bonus based on performance, and 50% getting a penalty, with no average change in payments.

Below is state level data for Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island: 

• Massachusetts - 54% receiving a bonus, 46% receiving a penalty (of 56 hospitals) with a .01% average change in payments.
• New Hampshire - 69% receiving a bonus, 31% receiving a penalty (of 13 hospitals) with a .08% average change in payments.
• Rhode Island - 36% receiving a bonus, 64% receiving a penalty (of 11 hospitals) with a -.10% average change in payments.

You can view how individual hospitals in each regional market did by using KHN’s interactive chart, which allows searching by region. KHN’s new analysis averaged hospital performance in each of those markets. You can read more about the data here.