Hospitals Improving on Medicare Value-Based Measures

U.S. hospitals continue to improve their performance under Medicare’s value-based purchasing program.

In FY 2018, 57 percent of hospitals will receive Medicare bonuses from the program, up from 55 percent in FY 2017.  Bonuses are generally small but for some hospitals will be more than three percent.  Roughly half of all hospitals will experience changes in their Medicare base rates.  The worst performers will see their payments decline 1.65 percent.

In FY 2018, hospitals that succeed in the program will share $1.9 billion in bonus payments.  Funding for those payments in this budget-neutral program comes from CMS withholding two percent of hospital inpatient payments to create the bonus pool.

Learn more about FY 2018 payments under the Medicare value-based purchasing program in this Healthcare Finance News article or go here for links to the raw CMS data about the program.