More than 750 facilities fined for hospital-acquired infections, CMS says; See the list

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Thursday said 758 hospitals failed to reach federal targets for hospital-acquired infections and will see a 1 percent payment reduction to all Medicare discharges for a year.

The 1 percent payment reduction will save CMS an estimated $364 million, the agency said. It will be applied for claims between October 1, 2015 and September 30, 2016.

The 758 out of 3,308 providers represent those in the worst performing quartile. The 75th percentile score cutoff for fiscal year 2016 was 6.75, compared to 7.0 in fiscal year 2015, according to CMS, because more hospitals earned poor scores.

The percentage of hospitals in the worst performing quartile jumped from 21.9 percent of hospitals in 2015 to 22.9 percent of hospitals in the 2016.

Of those hospitals in the worst performing quartile for 2016, approximately 53.7 percent were also in the worst performing quartile in 2015.

In fiscal 2015, 724 hospitals were subject to a payment reduction.The program was established by the Affordable Care Act as an incentive for hospitals to reduce infections. The Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services will have the lower scoring hospitals' payments reduced to 99 percent of what would otherwise have been paid for such discharges.

This applies to all applicable hospitals except for those in Maryland  because providers in that state are involved in an all-payer model.

The average performance across eligible hospitals improved on two of the three measures included in both program years.

In particular, the mean patient safety indicator 90 composite index  value decreased from 0.89 to 0.86 in fiscal 2016, and the mean central line-associated bloodstream infection standardized infection ratio decreased from 0.53 in to 0.48.

The mean catheter-associated urinary tract infection standardized infection ratio increased slightly from 1.13 to 1.17.

The mean surgical site infection standardized infection ratio was 0.95 in 2016, the first year the measure was used in the program.

Twitter: @SusanJMorse