Medicare comparisons wrong, hospitals say
Staff writer
Both Hillsboro Community Hospital and St. Luke Hospital in Marion are inaccurately described on a Medicare hospital comparison webpage, hospital officials say.
According to the website, HCH does not offer emergency care.
The same website says St. Luke doesn’t meet standards to share electronic patient records with other hospitals.
Chief executive officers of both hospitals are aware of the false portrayals and trying to get the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid to correct the listings.
Apparently, they might as well beat their heads against a wall.
HCH chief executive Mark Rooker said he had tried since his 2020 hiring to get Medicare’s hospital listing corrected.
“I’ve contacted them again and again,” Rooker said. “Maybe it’s a big deal to change the website,” he said.
He wonders whether the problem goes back to a 2019 ownership transition as part of a bankruptcy.
St. Luke chef executive Alex Haines said his hospital was up to snuff on interoperability of medical records.
“This website is inaccurately describing that St. Luke hospital has not successfully completed the Performing Interoperability program last year,” Haines said. “I’m not sure why it doesn’t show that we meet the program requirements.”
Haines emailed a copy of a certificate of compliance from Medicare and Medicaid.
The hospital would face reduced Medicare payments if it did not comply with rules for ability to share medical records with other hospitals, Haines said.
He’s not sure hospitals will maintain compliance with the requirement for electronic sharing of hospital records, however.
“I think you will start to see in the coming years that people stop participating in the program because the cost to be compliant is rising drastically each year and benefits are reducing drastically as well,” he said.
Herington Hospital, closed after a mortgage foreclosure, is listed on the webpage as providing emergency services and being able to share patient records.