Bulletin Board
Bulletin Board
Grassley Questions Aspects of Graduate Medical Education
Graduate medical education is the subject of inquiry in a recent letter from Senate Finance Committee chairman Charles Grassley to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. In his letter to Secretary Azar, Senator Grassley asks for information about how federal GME money is spent and how much is spent, how federal money factors into the broader financing of hospital residency programs, and how the federal government ensures that GME programs engage in best practices. The letter also questions whether the indirect benefits of operating medical education programs are factored [...]
Immigrants Intimidated by New Public Charge Guidelines?
Immigrants served by community health centers appear less inclined than in the past to seek public aid to help them with their medical problems. And community health center staff believes this is the result of confusion and fear as a result of changing federal immigration policies. As stated in the Kaiser Family Foundation issue brief “Impact of Shifting Immigration Policy on Medicaid Enrollment and Utilization of Care among Health Center Patients,” Health centers reported that, in recent months, immigrant patients have declined to enroll or reenroll themselves and/or their children [...]
No Primary Doc Shortage for Medicare Patients – at Least Not Yet
Medicare patients currently have adequate access to primary care physicians, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. But that could change in the near future, MedPAC warns. Amid long-term concerns about whether there are enough primary care doctors, a new MedPAC report found that there are even fewer primary care doctors than most people believe. MedPAC reached this conclusion after finding that approximately one out of every five doctors thought to be working as primary care physicians now labor instead as hospitalists. As a result, growth in the number of [...]
Most Hospitals Hit With Medicare Readmissions Penalties
Nearly 2600 hospitals will be penalized by Medicare in FY 2020 for excessive patient readmissions under Medicare’s hospital readmissions reduction program, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. In all, 83 percent of hospitals covered by the program will be penalized, forfeiting up to three percent of their Medicare payments with an average penalty of 0.71 percent of those payments. The cumulative penalties for these hospitals will amount to $563 million in FY 2020. In all, 1177 hospitals will be penalized more than they were last year and [...]
MedPAC Meets
Last week the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission met in Washington, D.C. to discuss a number of Medicare payment issues. The issues on MedPAC’s October agenda were: restructuring Medicare Part D improving Medicare payment for low-volume and isolated outpatient dialysis facilities updates to the methods used to assess the adequacy of Medicare’s payments for physicians and other health professionals population-based outcome measures: avoidable hospitalizations and emergency department visits aligning benefits and cost-sharing under a unified payment system for post-acute care policy options to modify the hospice aggregate cap MedPAC is an [...]