A total of 721 hospitals will have their Medicare payments cut because they have the highest rates of hospital-acquired conditions, according to an article on the Becker's Hospital CFO website.

According to the article, among the 15 things to know about the hospital-acquired conditions (HAC) program and the penalties are:

• The HAC Program is aimed at reducing preventable harm to patients by penalizing the 25 percent of hospitals with the highest rates of HACs. These facilities will have their payments reduced by 1 percent for all discharges occurring after Oct. 1, 2014.

• The HACs looked at include a group of reasonably preventable conditions, including infections that patients did not have upon admission and developed during the hospital stay.

•  On Dec. 18, the American Hospital Association sent a letter to the Director of the Quality Measurement and Health Assessment Group strongly urged the program "to address other more significant and meaningful issues in the HAC program" going forward, including supporting "innovative approaches to measuring patient safety events" such as hospitals "developing all-cause patient harm measures derived from EHRs."

Read the article.