Bulletin Board
Bulletin Board
Community Health Center Patients Often Have Housing Problems
Nearly half of the patients served by community health centers have housing problems, according to a new report published by the Journal of the American Medical Association. Among those problems: two or more homes in the past year alone, difficulty paying their rent or mortgage, and homelessness. Some have homes that are not their own. Practitioners need to understand this and help patients address their housing challenges, the study suggests, because housing concerns often prevent such patients from complying with medical instructions. Learn more about how housing challenges affect health [...]
Chronic Care Program Shows Early Encouraging Results
Medicare’s chronic care management program appears to be reducing the cost of caring for participants while improving their quality of life. The program, which pays physicians for non-face-to-face services they provided to coordinate care for their Medicare patients with at least two chronic medical conditions, was introduced in 2015. An analysis of its performance found that payments of up to $50 a month …improved patient satisfaction and adherence to recommended therapies, improved clinician efficiency, and decreased hospitalizations and emergency department (ED) visits. While Medicare paid roughly $52 million in chronic [...]
GAO: CMS Needs to Do Better Job on Demonstration Evaluations
The federal government needs to do a better job of evaluating Medicaid demonstration programs, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Demonstration programs, on which the federal government spends more than $300 billion a year, exempt states from selected federal Medicaid requirements and regulations so they can test new approaches to providing and paying for care for their Medicaid population. As part of waiving these requirements, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services requires the states to perform or commission evaluations of the effectiveness of those new approaches. According to [...]
Administration Slows Movement Toward Medicare Quality Payments
The Trump administration is slowing Medicare’s movement toward making greater use of quality in its payment system. The Obama administration’s goal of having 50 percent of Medicare payments made through a quality or alternative payment model by the end of 2018 now appears to be out of sight. Instead, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has partially canceled two bundled payment programs – one for joint replacement and another for cardiac rehabilitation programs – and announced that before introducing new programs it wants to take a closer look at [...]
Senators Push IRS on Non-Profit Compliance
Two prominent senators have written to the Internal Revenue Service seeking information about what the agency is doing to ensure that non-profit hospitals comply with the requirements for providing sufficient community benefits to justify their tax-exempt status. Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Chuck Grassley (R-IA), a senior member of that committee, have asked the IRS to provide their committee with specific information about how the IRS evaluates non-profit hospitals’ Form 990 Schedule H; about guidance the IRS provides regarding how hospitals define their communities [...]