Medicare Readmission Penalties By Hospital, Year 7

Medicare will apply these readmissions penalties to hospital reimbursements from Oct. 1, 2018, through Sept. 30, 2019, which covers the 2019 federal fiscal year (FY2019). This chart also shows penalties for the 2018 fiscal year, and which peer group each hospital was compared with, based on their proportion of low-income patients. Hospitals with the highest portion of low-income patients were placed in the fifth peer group, and those with the fewest were put in the first peer group.

NOTE: Maryland hospitals were not penalized because the state has federal permission to set its own Medicare payment rules. Also exempt are certain cancer hospitals, critical access hospitals and hospitals dedicated to psychiatry, rehabilitation, long-term care and veterans. Medicare also did not levy penalties against hospitals that had too few cases to be fairly evaluated.