More than half of Colorado hospitals receiving Medicare payments will lose a portion of those reimbursements this year as penalty for having relatively high rates of readmissions.

Hospital readmissions deemed avoidable — unplanned and occurring within 30 days of discharge — happen 2 million times a year at a cost estimated by the government of $26 billion a year.

This program, part of the Affordable Care Act, claims $17 billion of that could be avoided with better care during and after hospitalization.

For each hospital the penalties are more of a nibble than a bite out of revenues, but officials say they take it seriously.

“While our readmission rates were higher than expected, we have been diligently working to look at all aspects of the discharge and readmit process to find areas of opportunity for improvement,” said Parker Adventist Hospital spokeswoman Rachel Robinson.

Twenty-seven of 47 Colorado hospitals covered by the program have been assessed an average reduction of 0.33 percent of their 2015 Medicare payments, according to federal data and Kaiser Health News reports.

Colorado hospitals facing the worst losses, with penalties of 1.29 percent to 0.56 percent, were Arkansas Valley Regional Medical Center in La Junta, Parker Adventist, St. Thomas More Hospital in Cañon City, University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora and the Medical Center of Aurora.

The maximum potential penalty is 3 percent of Medicare reimbursements. Overall, Colorado hospitals performed better than the national average.

Several Colorado hospital officials noted that the readmission rate is just one isolated measure of the quality of patient care. None would provide an estimate of 2015 Medicare losses under the penalties.

The Centura hospital system, with five Colorado hospitals hit with penalties this year, including Parker Adventist and St. Thomas More, estimates that penalties will mean a loss of $360,000 out of its net operating revenue of about $2.7 billion.

“Readmissions are just one way to evaluate the quality of a hospital,” Robinson said. “Recently, other third-party organizations have found the care delivered at our hospital to be excellent, as evidenced by the continuous awards and recognition.”

Officials at CU Hospital said readmission rates are not reflective of the quality of care at a large teaching center.

“As an academic medical center, University of Colorado Hospital cares for the very sickest patients — those patients whose conditions are so complex that other hospitals are unable to care for them,” media relations director Dan Weaver said. “University of Colorado Hospital is recognized both statewide and nationally for our excellent patient safety and quality.”

St. Thomas More marketing director Jillian Maes said the hospital continuously monitors its readmissions and quality data and was aware the readmission rate was higher than expected.

“We have not received penalties the past two years, so (we) are taking this very seriously,” Maes said.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services program will reduce payments to 2,610 hospitals nationwide in 2015, according to Kaiser Health News. The program doesn’t cover about 1,400 hospitals, including certain cancer centers, psychiatric facilities and children’s and veterans’ hospitals.

Three-quarters of all hospitals nationwide will be penalized an average of 0.63 percent. In Colorado, 26 of 81 total hospitals, or 32 percent, are losing a smaller percentage of reimbursement, on average.

Medicare’s Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program is intended to push hospitals to provide better follow-up care and instructions after a patient leaves the hospital rather than simply sending them off with a generic discharge plan. Before the program, hospitals could benefit financially more from returning patients than those who recovered enough to stay out of the hospital.

Almost one in five Medicare patients were readmitted within a month in 2013, according to federal statistics.

Some people are discharged before they are ready. More than half of discharged Medicare patients don’t see a doctor within two weeks of leaving the hospital. Or, when leaving, many are unclear about their medication usage or unaware of potential complications, according to a 2013 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation report, “The Revolving Door: A Report on U.S. Hospital Readmissions.”

To determine the readmissions penalty, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services examined patients treated in hospitals from July 1, 2010, through June 30, 2013, for one of five conditions. Beginning in 2014, the conditions tracked were heart failure, heart attack, pneumonia — of which relapses or complications are leading causes of readmissions — as well as chronic lung problems and elective hip and knee replacements. But patients readmitted within a month for any condition can lead to penalties. CMS has indicated it plans to add other conditions in coming years.

St. Thomas More Hospital is in its third year of a program called Care Transitions, which provides each inpatient with a team of nurse “navigators,” social workers and case managers to coordinate follow-up care of the released patient at home, Maes said. The hospital recently added more providers to its roster and believes this will help reduce readmissions.