By Susan Jaffe | September 30, 2014
Connecticut Health Investigative Team and The Hartford Courant
Starting Wednesday, a new state law requires Connecticut hospitals to tell all patients when 
they are being kept in the hospital for observation instead of being admitted and to warn them about the financial consequences.
Anyone who goes to the hospital can be placed on observation status, so that doctors can determine what’s wrong, and decide whether the patient is sick enough to be admitted or well enough to go home. Observation patients may receive diagnostic tests, medications, some treatment, and other outpatient services. Depending on their insurance, they can be 
charged a share of the cost. In addition to hospital bills, Medicare observation patients whose doctors order follow-up nursing home care will have to pay the nursing home themselves. Medicare covers nursing homes only after seniors are admitted to the hospital and stay through three consecutive midnights. A month in a Connecticut nursing home can cost as much as $15,000.
Medicare does not require hospitals to tell patients when they are getting observation care and what it means. And the number of Medicare observation patients is growing rapidly — 88 percent in the past six years, to 1.8 million nationally in 2012, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, an independent government agency.
…Meanwhile, more states are trying to address the situation. Connecticut becomes at least the third state in the nation, after New York and Maryland to require notification for observation status. Massachusetts, New Jersey and Pennsylvania are considering similar laws. CONTINUED in Connecticut Health Investigative Team CONTINUED in The Courant