Medicare penalizes four Maine hospitals for poor performance

Four Maine hospitals are being penalized by Medicare for poor patient safety rates.

York Hospital, in York, Southern Maine Health Care, in Biddeford, Cary Medical Center, in Caribou, and Central Maine Medical Center, in Lewiston, ranked among the bottom 25 percent of U.S. hospitals for things like hospital-acquired infections, bed sores, and hip fractures.

It’s the third year in a row that Central Maine Medical Center has been penalized. President David Tuppence says he’s working to make the hospital more clinically-driven than in the past.

“We’re appointing a physician leader as our chief quality officer, which is the first one in recent years,” he says. “We’re hiring a system director of infection prevention.”

The penalized hospitals will have their Medicare reimbursements reduced by 1 percent for the 2018 fiscal year.

This article appears through a media partnership with Maine Public.