The back room of Gerdes and Sons, a Brainerd-area business <\/b>where deer are skinned and quartered, was an odd location for community paramedic David Smith to examine his patient, Justin Gerdes. <\/p>\n
But it didn\u2019t change Smith\u2019s goal: keeping Gerdes out of the hospital. Both his patient\u2019s health and the bottom line of his employer, Essentia Health, were at stake.<\/p>\n
Gerdes had been admitted this fall to St. Joseph\u2019s Medical Center in Brainerd for a fungal infection that got into his blood stream and damaged his heart. The 42-year-old was at risk for going back to the hospital if he overexerted himself. On the other hand, it was the busy season for his all-purpose maintenance business. There were docks to pull, yards to maintain, pumpkins to sell and wild game to dress.<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand. I live in reality,\u201d Smith told Gerdes on Oct. 15 after checking his blood pressure. \u201cJust as long as you\u2019re not getting lightheaded, dizzy. Those are the cardiac symptoms you really need to look out for.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paramedic visits and other efforts have helped Minnesota hospitals reduce readmissions for patients such as Gerdes and avoid steep federal penalties from Medicare, the massive federal health care program for senior citizens. New federal data shows 16 Minnesota hospitals avoided any penalties at all out of 46 scrutinized for readmissions.<\/p>\n
The other 30 hospitals will collectively pay $2 million to $3 million in federal penalties next year, which is relatively small compared to the billions of dollars that Medicare reimburses them for medical care. But the penalties aren\u2019t just about money. They can be publicly embarrassing, and an indication that hospitals are struggling with value-based care, an industry term that means taking better care of patients for less money.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody loses if patients get readmitted that shouldn\u2019t have needed readmissions,\u201d said Dr. Cathy Cantor, chief population health officer for Duluth-based Essentia Health. <\/p>\n
Twelve years ago, Medicare began penalizing hospitals on as much as 3% of their fee-for-service revenues if they readmitted too many patients. Today, it remains the most public example of numerous financial incentives for hospitals. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The back room of Gerdes and Sons, a Brainerd-area business where deer are skinned and quartered, was an…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":329066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[210,1141,1142,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-329065","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-health-care","10":"tag-healthcare","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115429040727008577","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}