https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/24/fact-check-medicare-hospitals-paid-more-covid-19-patients-coronavirus/3000638001/
Jensen said, "Hospital administrators might well want to see COVID-19 attached to a discharge summary or a death certificate. Why? Because if it's a straightforward, garden-variety pneumonia that a person is admitted to the hospital for – if they're Medicare – typically, the diagnosis-related group lump sum payment would be $5,000. But if it's COVID-19 pneumonia, then it's $13,000, and if that COVID-19 pneumonia patient ends up on a ventilator, it goes up to $39,000."
Jensen clarified in the video that he doesn't think physicians are "gaming the system" so much as other "players," such as hospital administrators, who he said may pressure physicians to cite all diagnoses, including "probable" COVID-19, on discharge papers or death certificates to get the higher Medicare allocation allowed under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act. Past practice, Jensen said, did not include probabilities.
The coronavirus relief legislation created a 20% premium, or add-on, for COVID-19 Medicare patients.
If a Medicare patient is diagnosed with – or even presumed to have contracted -- coronavirus, hospitals across the United States are given more money from the federal government to treat that patient, economic assessments show. That amount can as much as triple if the patient requires a ventilator, making some wonder whether there is a financial impetus to overstate coronavirus numbers, with others calling such potential abuse "unlikely."
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Skavau (9031)
a year ago
Ask FactCheck's conclusion: "Recent legislation pays hospitals higher Medicare rates for COVID-19 patients and treatment, but there is no evidence of fraudulent reporting."
The specific claim was that there is systemic corruption in the US healthcare system.
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Bubbathegut (17215)
a year ago
I never said there was systemic corruption. You just made that up.
Jensen clarified in the video that he doesn't think physicians are "gaming the system" so much as other "players," such as hospital administrators, who he said may pressure physicians to cite all diagnoses, including "probable" COVID-19, on discharge papers or death certificates to get the higher Medicare allocation allowed under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act. Past practice, Jensen said, did not include probabilities.
Recent legislation pays hospitals higher Medicare rates for COVID-19 patients and treatment.
Hospitals got more money for covid patients. They made more money off covid then regular illnesses.
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