Medicare starts to reward quality, not quantity, of care

As part of the health care reform law, Medicare will tie bonuses and penalties on the quality of care provided to patients. Before the law begins in January, the nation’s largest insurer disclosed how individual hospitals will fair under the program. Don’t expect the hospitals with the most outsize reputations to do as well as the regional and community hospitals. In fact, a 10-bed hospital in Boise, Idaho is getting the biggest bonus of a 0.83 percent increase in payment for each Medicare patient.