An emergency room doctor speaks out...

and it's not pretty.

On Oct. 2 of this year, I posted about the fines being levied against hospitals if they re-admit a patient within 30 days of discharge.  Grouch at Right Truth, an ER doctor, tells us how this is working in the real world. 

From The Grouch at Right Truth:

Today while working my shift in the emergency room, an old lady was brought in very sick and in fact near death. I did my usual workup and evaluation and attempted to administer life saving treatment. It was my plan to admit this woman to the hospital. I found out a little later that this same woman had been a patient here just slightly more than 2 weeks ago with a DIFFERENT DIAGNOSIS. I was told that if this woman was admitted, the hospital would not be paid.

The new Medicare rule now is that if the same Medicare patient is re-admitted to the hospital within 30 days, the hospital will not be paid. When they first started this nonsense they said this only applied to patients with the same diagnosis. Now they have "expanded" the rule to include re-admissions for any reason. So if you're in the hospital for pneumonia, and 3 weeks later, you break your leg.......too bad. Medicare will not pay the hospital to fix your leg.  Read the rest

Thanks to Maggie's Notebook  for bringing this to our attention.