As St. Luke’s University Health Network celebrates being given five stars — the highest rating — by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the same agency is cutting the hospital’s Medicare payments for having had too many patients with hospital-acquired conditions or injuries at its Coaldale campus.

The 1 percent cuts will also be applied to hospitals in the Lehigh Valley Health Network, including Lehigh Valley Hospital- Schuylkill in Pottsville, and those in Hazleton, and Salisbury Township.

St. Luke’s University Health Network’s Chief Quality Officer Donna Sabol, said CMS’s penalty is unfair in that it’s based on “old data.”

“Our performance at Miners has improved since then. We do not expect a penalty in the next reporting period, based on our improved performance. The Miners Campus is now rated 5-stars by CMS — the top rating — based on a more recent reporting period than that of the HAC penalty,” she said in a prepared statement.

The hospitals are among 751 that will have their Medicare payments cut back in fiscal year 2018. The full list can be seen at https://www.medicare.gov/hospitalcompare/HAC-reduction-program.html.

The cuts, created to be used as penalties under the Affordable Care Act, are known as the HAC (hospital-acquired conditions) Reduction Program and were established in 2015.

The program’s goal is to reduce patient harm by using the Medicare payments as a financial incentive.

The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services uses a complicated, six-factor formula to determine which hospitals will be docked the payments.

The formula factors in the rates of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, Clostridium difficile, central-line-associated bloodstream, surgical site, and catheter-associated urinary tract infections.

It also includes something called the Patient Safety Indicators 90 Composite, which includes 10 types of in-hospital injuries, including hip fractures from falls in the hospital, pressure ulcers and postoperative respiratory failure.

But the HAC Reduction Program has its share of critics.

Among them is the American Hospital Association, which has questioned CMS’ data methodology, and has suggested the agency fails to take into account the kinds of patients hospitals serve.

The program is “poorly designed and imposes arbitrary, excessive penalties that disproportionately impact hospitals tending to care for the sickest patients,” the association wrote in a Sept. 7, 2016, statement to the House Ways and Means Committee Subcommittee on Health.

The CMS star rating was awarded to St. Luke’s in late December.

The rating is based on 57 factors that include patient satisfaction, health outcomes and a hospital’s quality measurement plan. The most common overall rating is three stars.

The Miners, Anderson and Warren campuses received 5-star ratings; St. Luke’s campuses in Allentown/Bethlehem, and Quakertown received 4-star ratings.

Its latest campus, in Monroe County, has yet to be rated.

To see hospital ratings, visit medicare.gov/hospitalcompare.