Bulletin Board
Bulletin Board
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 [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Medicare Penalizes Hospitals for Avoidable Injuries, Illnesses
Medicare is reducing payments to 751 hospitals because of the high rate at which their patients have suffered avoidable injuries and illnesses while in the hospital. The penalties come under Medicare’s Hospital-Acquired Condition Reduction Program, which was established by the Affordable Care Act. Among the penalized hospitals, more than half were penalized last year as well 115 are academic medical centers – about one-third of all such facilities more than one-third of all safety-net hospitals were penalized Learn more about the program, the penalties, and why the penalties were assessed [...]