January 2018

CMS Unveils New Bundled Payment Program

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has announced the launch of a new bundled payment model called “Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Advanced.”  Under this new program – participation in which will be voluntary – participants can, as CMS explains …earn additional payment if all expenditures for a beneficiary’s episode of care are under a spending target that factors in quality. The following are a few highlights of BPCI Advanced. It encompasses 32 types of clinical episodes (29 inpatient and three outpatient).  These episodes, of 90 days, may change in the future. Participating providers can waive the Medicare requirement [...]

2018-01-11T06:00:30-05:00January 11, 2018|Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Medicare|
Read More

Medicaid Expansion Helps Save Hospitals

Hospitals in states that took advantage of the Affordable Care Act to expand their Medicaid programs are six times less likely to close than hospitals in non-expansion states. And the impact of Medicaid expansion is even more beneficial for hospitals that serve rural communities. These are among the new findings in a new study that examines the effect of Medicaid expansion on hospital finances and hospital closures.  Among those findings, We found that the ACA’s Medicaid expansion was associated with improved hospital financial performance and substantially lower likelihoods of closure, especially in rural markets and counties with large numbers of [...]

2018-01-10T06:00:57-05:00January 10, 2018|Affordable Care Act, hospitals, Medicaid|
Read More

Report Looks at Work Requirements

As a growing number of states consider implementing work requirements as a condition for Medicaid eligibility, the Urban Institute has released a report that describes work requirements in various government cash assistance, nutrition assistance, and housing assistance programs and considers the degree to which those requirements have achieved their policy objectives. The report also describes the applications that eight states have submitted to the federal government seeking permission to introduce a work requirement in their Medicaid programs. Go here to see the Urban Institute report Work Requirements in Social Safety Net Programs: A Status Report of Work Requirements in TANF, [...]

2018-01-09T06:00:48-05:00January 9, 2018|Medicaid|
Read More

The Telehealth Trend

Patients, insurers (including government), and providers are all looking toward telehealth as a means of enhancing access to care and improving the health of people.  In recognition of this trend, the web site Healthcare Finance News has published a series of articles looking at telehealth: Growing demand for telemedicine fueling multibillion dollar market growth Telemedicine can lower costs for health systems by $24 a patient, study finds CMS to waive restrictions to reimburse for telemedicine in the joint replacement payment model Almost all large employers plan to offer telehealth in 2018, but will employees use it? Why telehealth is fueling [...]

2018-01-08T06:00:05-05:00January 8, 2018|Uncategorized|
Read More

© 2023 DeBrunner & Associates, All Rights Reserved.

Go to Top