HuskerBoard

A friend told me that hospitals are getting a $17k payment for each death.  If so, that would explain the inaccuracies in reporting Covid-19 deaths.  

I haven't seen anything like this, and a google search doesn't turn anything up. Where did your friend hear this? Who is paying the hospitals this money?

I didn't ask him about his sources.  But I will.  

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/24/fact-check-medicare-hospitals-paid-more-covid-19-patients-coronavirus/3000638001/

From what I've read, they get about $13,000 for each Covid death.  There's a narrative that they are using the deaths to get money (I believe from the gov't) but they are saying the average cost of a patient on a respirator is about $13,600 or so.  I still think there may be some over reporting personally bc $$ but there's no proof of it at this point.

If you know a doctor, please ask them to tell how they fill out death certificates. It is very informative and really straight forward. 

It doesn't matter if a person dies or not, but Medicare (aka the government) roughly pays a hospital a $13k flat rate for that hospital having a Medicare member that gets admitted with COVID.  I think Medicare pays ~$40k for an admit with a ventilator, death or no.

Medicare (aka the government) has a fee schedule that they follow for payments to hospitals/doctors.  This fee schedule varies based on the severity of the admit/procedure, as well as a couple other factors (the location of the hospital/doctor, etc).

If a non-Medicare person gets admitted with COVID, then that hospital gets $0 from the government.  They would get the

negotiated rate with the insurance company that covers the person admitted.

The best way to figure out how many people died of Covid will be a few months from now when we can compare the regular death rate to these past few months. I'm not sure there's hard data yet and I'm too lazy to look it up right now, but with the way they're recording deaths as definitely attributable to Covid and possibly (someone in the medical field will have to give me the correct words to use there) I think everything is a bit of guesswork at this point.

What'll be interesting to see is the mortality rate of this disease. We know it kills, but at what rate? Who's had it? How long has it really been circulating? Who's been exposed but fought it off with little to no symptoms? Tons of questions about this thing.

Here's where the number are right now............The Covid death numbers are way too high due to ridiculous reporting guidelines and $$$ incentive. The tested positive number is way too low due to lack of testing for everyone. So, the death rate is way too high. The truth is somewhere in between, and imo, on the definite lower end of in between.

medicaid pays the hospital extra money if the patient dies?

@C N Red Hospitals don't get money from Medicare for people who die. They get money for the people they treat and the type of care given. The root of this whole thing is a Republican lawmaker from Minnesota making a comment that there is POTENTIAL for abuse by hospitas to get more money. That potential was there even before COVID though.

The $$ is definitely incentive, but the "recommendations" and "guidelines" for coding are a joke. Have an MI, asymptomatic for Covid, but tested positive, ends up dying, pushed to code as Covid death. There are plenty of Drs out there talking about how they were told they should code deaths as covid for instances like this. Plenty of instances out there that can be found with a quick search.

Then send them to jail or fine them, but I'm pretty sure you don't get money just for them being COVID. They need to be serious enough to stay in the hospital to get money. Then you get more if they are on a vent. Also, it's only people covered by Medicare so it's not every single patient. It's basically like insurance money, but from the government.

My town (pop. 40k) has had one Covid-19 death.  Supposedly.  The 50-something year old woman was on hospice care, dying of cancer.  She had a heart attack at home and was resuscitated.  They took her to the hospital where she died.  The hospital reported it as a Covid-19 death.  Heh.       

@NUance @C N Red my town of 3k has over 10 deaths due to covid-19. They were in a long term care facility but it wasn't like they all would of dropped dead due to other causes within a three week time period. I guess they were old so we shouldn't count them. You can cherry pick all sorts of things to try and make it sound better than it really is, but people are dying from this. 

The hospitals should be getting money for this care. The effort that nurses and doctors have to go through to keep these critical patients alive is crazy. Tons of care, meds, and special equipment like vents. They can barely leave the rooms. Unfortunately the money doesn't really go where it should to reimburse those healthcare workers. That's a whole other issue.

Like Jaws said a lot of the patients my fiancée worked with had other morbidities that would have killed them, but not as quick as COVID did.