BREMERTON From Harrison Medical Center to pharmacies, dozens of local health organization are banding together to meet health care reform head on. <\/p>\n
A new effort tasked with pulling it off is the Kitsap County Cross Continuum Care Transitions Project, or KC4TP for short. <\/p>\n
One of its biggest goals: reduce the rate of hospital readmissions within 30 days for Medicare patients. <\/p>\n
The benefit for patients: care thats more attentive to detail as the patient is moved from hospital to nursing home, assisted living or home. <\/p>\n
Right now, 20 percent of Medicare patients nationally are readmitted to hospitals within a month after being discharged. Their follow-up care, in some instances, hasnt been all that it could be. <\/p>\n
This represents a failure in either the care of the patient thats given or the discharge, said Lauren Newcomer, director of quality and operational improvement at Harrison and one of the KC4TP leaders. <\/p>\n
Unnecessary readmissions are a no-no under federal health care reform, because it costs more money to put patients back into the most expensive settings. <\/p>\n
Currently under reform, hospitals are penalized 1 percent of total Medicare reimbursements for having too many readmissions. That jumps to 3 percent by 2017. <\/p>\n
Its a huge amount of money thats at stake, Newcomer said. <\/p>\n
Harrison hasnt had to pay any penalties. If it had, 1 percent would have amounted to $650,000; 3 percent would have been $1.95 million, according to Harrison spokeswoman Jacquie Goodwill. <\/p>\n
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Health care providers talking more to each other<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BREMERTON From Harrison Medical Center to pharmacies, dozens of local health organization are banding together to meet health care reform head on. A new effort tasked with pulling it off is the Kitsap County Cross Continuum Care Transitions Project, or KC4TP for short. One of its biggest goals: reduce the rate of hospital readmissions within 30 days for Medicare patients Continue reading