Bulletin Board
Bulletin Board
CMS Publishes Quality Measures Under Consideration for 2018
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has published a list of quality measures it is considering implementing in Medicare quality programs in the coming year. The list consists of 32 proposed measures, down significantly from the nearly 100 it proposed last year. These measures are subject to comment by the National Quality Forum and stakeholders. Go here to see a commentary from CMS explaining what it hopes to accomplish and how it is pursuing those goals and go here to see a CMS document presenting the 32 proposed quality [...]
New Help With Addressing Low-Income Patients’ Social Services Needs?
One of the long-time barriers to states and hospitals addressing low-income patients’ social services needs and the social determinants of health has been a lack of resources for such assistance. Medicaid, in particular, has not been a financial participant in such efforts. But that may be changing. The new federal Medicaid managed care regulation, updated nearly two years ago, allows for the inclusion of some non-clinical services as covered Medicaid services and for funding for such services to be folded into Medicaid managed care plans’ capitation rates and medical loss [...]
The Battle Over 340B
Hospitals and other health care providers say it is an essential tool in ensuring access to care, and to prescription drugs, for their low-income patients. Pharmaceutical companies say it has expanded beyond its original purpose and is being used by hospitals to pad their profits. Members of Congress are divided: some are supportive and some are skeptical. The section 340B program that requires drug companies to provide discounts to selected hospitals and other providers that serve large numbers of low-income patients has been the subject of controversy in recent years. [...]
Is Readmissions Reduction Program Hurting Some Patients?
A new study suggests that the decline in avoidable hospital readmissions of Medicare patients driven by the federal program’s hospital readmissions reduction program may be harming cardiac patients. According to a new study published in the journal JAMA Cardiology, while the readmissions reduction program has reduced readmissions among heart failure patients from 20 percent before the program was launched to 18.4 percent, the mortality rate among the same patients rose from 7.2 percent to 8.6 percent – 5400 more deaths a year. To learn more about the study, its results, [...]
Telehealth on the Upswing
A number of recent developments suggest that serving patients with the assistance of telehealth services will become more commonplace in the near future. The Medicare MACRA and MIPS payment programs will include new billing codes for telehealth services, according to regulations published earlier this month. Also earlier this month, the House passed legislation, The Vets Act (H.R. 2123), that would authorize the Veterans Administration to make greater use of telehealth. And when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General recently announced plans to audit [...]