By Brock Simmons
A Minnesota state senator, who also happens to be a doctor, has come forward to reveal how hospitals are getting more in funding if they list more patients as having COVID-19, even if the patients are more likely to have something else, such as pneumonia. The issue is the loose definitions of the terms “probable” and “presumed” and how those terms can be applied. This is less on the doctors themselves and more on the health care administrators.
Even the leftist media is confirming this is true, as USA Today reports:
Sen. Scott Jensen, R-Minn., a physician in Minnesota, was interviewed by “The Ingraham Angle” host Laura Ingraham on April 8 on Fox News and claimed hospitals get paid more if Medicare patients are listed as having COVID-19 and get three times as much money if they need a ventilator.
Here is a brief article. Read the first four paragraphs. Clearly New York and California are using vastly different…
Posted by Scott Jensen on Wednesday, April 15, 2020
On April 19, he doubled down on his assertion via video on his Facebook page.
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.
full story at https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/04/fact-check-hospitals-get-paid-listing-patients-covid-19-even-show-symptoms/