Bulletin Board
Bulletin Board
CMS Reinforces Need for Budget Neutrality in Medicaid Waivers
States that seek federal waivers for permission to employ new approaches to serving their Medicaid population will have to pass more rigorous tests to ensure that those new approaches are budget-neutral, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has announced. In a detailed letter to state Medicaid directors, CMS outlines some of the current methodologies employed by states to demonstrate the budget neutrality of their waiver requests and details instances in which it will judge those methodologies differently in the future. A news release accompanying the letter explains that ….this [...]
Growing Number of Hospitals on the Critical List
Eight percent of American hospitals – 450 of them – are at risk of closing in the coming years and another 10 percent, or 600 hospitals, are considered “weak” according to a new analysis performed by Morgan Stanley. The signs of these problems include sinking margins, declining occupancy and revenue, and government and insurer policies that enable patients to receive certain services at facilities other than hospitals, as they did in the past. The largest concentrations of at-risk hospitals can be found in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Kansas, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania. [...]
Large Number of Hospitals on the Critical List
Eight percent of American hospitals – 450 of them – are at risk of closing in the coming years and another 10 percent, or 600 hospitals, are considered “weak” according to a new analysis performed by Morgan Stanley. The signs of these problems include sinking margins, declining occupancy and revenue, and government and insurer policies that enable patients to receive certain services at facilities other than hospitals, as they did in the past. The largest concentrations of at-risk hospitals can be found in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Kansas, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania. [...]
HHS Seeks Feedback on Anti-Kickback Challenges
The Office of the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has issued a request for information from health care stakeholders on how the federal government might modify current safe-harbor and anti-kickback laws and regulations in ways that might promote the provision of better health care at lower costs. The RFI explains that The Office of Inspector General (OIG) seeks to identify ways in which it might modify or add new safe harbors to the anti-kickback statute and exceptions to the beneficiary inducements civil monetary penalty [...]
Medicaid Expansion Helping Diabetics
The Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion has led to a 40 percent increase in the number of prescriptions for diabetes medicine filled in the 30 states that expanded their Medicaid programs. Meanwhile, there was no change in the number of diabetes-related prescriptions filled in states that did not expand their Medicaid programs. This is considered important because it suggests that many low-income people who either could not afford their diabetes medicine or whose illness was undiagnosed are now being treated for the disease – a significant development because every diabetic [...]