LEWISTON — Eight Maine hospitals are facing federal penalties for infection and complication rates.

Both Lewiston hospitals — Central Maine Medical Center and St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center — are on the list.

This is the second year Medicare has fined hospitals whose safety scores dip below a certain line. Last year, six Maine hospitals were on the list, including St. Mary’s. This is the first time for CMMC.

The other Maine hospitals on this year’s list are MaineGeneral Medical Center, Augusta; Eastern Maine Medical Center, Bangor; Maine Coast Memorial Hospital, Ellsworth; Maine Medical Center, Portland; Mercy Hospital, Portland; and York Hospital, York.

MaineGeneral, EMMC and MMC were also penalized last year. Maine Coast Memorial, Mercy and York are new to the list this year.

Inland Hospital in Waterville and The Aroostook Medical Center in Presque Isle were on the list last year but improved enough to be knocked off this year’s list.

In all, 758 hospitals around the country will be penalized, losing 1 percent of their Medicare payments for the fiscal year ending September 2016. The penalties will total an estimated $364 million.

“Broadly speaking, we think these programs are a good thing and an appropriate thing for Medicare to do, to not just pay for each service but to look at outcomes and to look at quality and performance,” said Jeff Austin, spokesman for the Maine Hospital Association. “That’s a good thing.”

However, he said the hospital association is concerned about the structure of the program. It does not reward top performers like other federal programs designed to promote hospital quality, opting instead to simply punish low performers, he said. And by law, the program must annually penalize the bottom 25 percent, regardless of how high their scores are.

“I don’t think we’ve had near perfection yet on these issues, but you could conceivably get there and there’s still going to be 25 percent of hospitals that are  cut,” Austin said.

Specialty hospitals, including psychiatric, rehabilitation, veterans and small rural “critical access” hospitals, are exempt from the penalty.

Of the 37 hospitals open in Maine at the time, 16 were classified as critical access, two were psychiatric and one was rehab.

The federal government looked at 2013 and 2014 infection rates for patients who underwent central lines, urinary catheters, colon surgeries or hysterectomies. It also considered 2012-2014 rates for eight other complications, including collapsed lungs and broken hips.

Hospitals were scored on a scale of 1 to 10. They will be penalized if their overall score was higher than 6.75. 

St. Mary’s received a score of 8. It expects it will lose $177,000.

St. Mary’s spokeswomen noted that the hospital’s 2013 infection rates overlapped penalty lists, with Medicare looking at 2013 infection rates to determine fines both last year and this year. A hospital spokeswoman said St. Mary’s in 2013 saw some very sick patients with an unusually high number of urinary tract infections from catheters and central-line bloodstream infections.

The hospital put central line and catheter protocols in place soon after. In 2014, the hospital had none of those infections.

“Patient safety and the quality of care that we provide here at St. Mary’s is our priority,” said spokeswoman Jennifer Radel. “We’re always looking for evidence-based standards of care to make sure that we’re really providing the care that we need to to this community.”

CMMC received a score of 8.5. Because hospital officials could not be reached for comment Monday, it is unclear how much money CMMC will lose and why the hospital made the list this year.

ltice@sunjournal.com