Area Alabama hospitals not on penalty list for hospital infections

Two major area hospitals in Alabama are not on a U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services list of facilities being penalized for having too high of a rate of hospital-acquired infections.

A check of the federal list shows Jack Hughston Memorial Hospital on Riverchase Drive in Phenix City is not being penalized the 1 percent of federal Medicare payments for one year. Neither is East Alabama Medical Center in Opelika, Ala.

Of the 82 hospitals in Alabama, nine are on the list, which falls under the Hospital-Acquired Condition Reduction Program, which was started in 2015 under the Affordable Care Act.

Those being penalized are Southeast Alabama Medical Center (Dothan, Ala.), Callahan Eye Hospital, Jackson Hospital & Clinic Inc., Fayette Medical Center, Lawrence Medical Center, University of South Alabama Medical Center, D.W. McMillan Memorial Hospital, Medical West (an affiliate of UAB Health System) and Springhill Memorial Hospital.

The federal program requires payment reductions to those hospitals that rank in the worst-performing 25 percent of all locations. Areas measured include central line-associated bloodstream infections, catheter-associated urinary tract infections, surgical site infections (colon and hysterectomy), methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus bacteremia, and clostridium difficile infections.

Of the 134 hospitals in Georgia, 31 are being penalized for hospital-acquired infections. Those include Midtown Medical Center in Columbus, but not Northside Medical Center on the city’s north side. St. Francis Hospital in Columbus also is not the federal list.

Columbus Regional Health, parent company of Midtown Medical Center and Northside Medical Center, said it is working to improve in the area of hospital-acquired infections, using “best practices” that include daily huddles among doctors and staff and mandatory education sessions. The health-care system said it expects to see improvement in future data released by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

“We have always been, and we remain, committed to the challenges of improvement over time and to providing the best care possible for our patients,” Ryan Chandler, Columbus Regional Health executive vice president and chief operating officer, said in a statement.

(Midtown Medical Center penalized for hospital-acquired infections)

This story was originally published January 10, 2017 at 12:54 PM with the headline "Area Alabama hospitals not on penalty list for hospital infections."