Wilton Nursing Home Penalized by Medicare

WILTON, CT —The Wilton Meadows Health Center is on the list of Connecticut nursing homes which will see their Medicare reimbursements reduced in the coming year due to their high readmission rates, Kaiser Health News is reporting.

Note that WMHC will have plenty of company: Out of 224 nursing homes in the state, 168 (75 percent) are being penalized, KHN says. WMHC, however, has received the highest penalty that Maedicare metes out, a 1.98 percent reduction on each resident's Medicare payment. Another 37 nursing homes earned the maximum penalty as well.

Medicare punishing or rewarding nursing homes based upon how many of their residents are readmitted to hospitals for conditions that could have been prevented is new this year. Medicare has had a similar reckoning with hospitals since 2013.

If WMHC got the stick, who got the carrot? For Connecticut, KHN cites Chestelm Health Care, in Moodus; Litchfield Woods Health Care Center, in Torrington; and Hughes Health and Rehabilitation in West Hartford as receiving the highest bonus that Medicare awards —a 1.5 percent boost in reimbursements.

For more, including a national database scoring every U.S. nursing home, see Kaiser Health News.

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