Bulletin Board
Bulletin Board
CMS Offers States New Medicaid Path for Opioid Treatment
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued new guidance to states advising them on how they can use section 1115 Medicaid waivers to improve access to treatment for Medicaid recipients struggling with opioid abuse problems. According to the 14-page guidance letter from CMS to state Medicaid directors, CMS is now offering a more flexible, streamlined approach to accelerate states’ ability to respond to the national opioid crisis while enhancing states’ monitoring and reporting of the impact of any changes imsplemented through these demonstrations. As the opioid crisis [...]
MedPAC Meets
The agency that advises Congress on Medicare payment issues met in Washington, D.C. last week. At that meeting, members of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission discussed a number of Medicare payment issues, including: refining an alternative to the merit-based incentive payment system (MIPS) improving incentives in the emergency debarment payment system rebalancing the physician fee schedule towards primary care increasing the equity of payments within each post-acute-care setting principles for evaluating the expansion of Medicare’s coverage of telehealth services Find the issue briefs and presentations used during the meeting to [...]
Alternative Payment Model Spending Grows
In 2016, 29 percent of all health care payments were made through alternative payment models, continuing the movement toward paying for value rather than for volume. That 29 percent in 2016 was up from 23 percent in 2015. APMs include shared savings and shared risk programs, bundled payments, and population-based payments. Fee-for-service and other “legacy” payments accounted for 43 percent of health care payments in 2016 and pay for performance or care coordination fees accounted for another 28 percent of payments. These numbers come from a report from the Health [...]
CMS Announces Drive to Reduce Paperwork
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is launching a new “Meaningful Measures” initiative that will seek to reduce the regulatory burden on health care providers. According to a CMS news release, Meaningful Measures …will involve only assessing those core issues that are most vital to providing high-quality care and improving patient outcomes. The agency aims to focus on outcome-based measures going forward, as opposed to trying to micromanage processes.. In a speech at the Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network, CMS administrator Seema Verma explained that this project [...]
CMS Nursing Home Program Cuts Hospital Admissions
An experimental Medicare program has helped nursing homes reduce the frequency with which their residents are admitted to hospitals. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Initiative to Reduce Avoidable Hospitalizations Among Nursing Facility Residents has reduced avoidable hospitalizations among nursing facility residents 17 percent in the program’s three years. 143 nursing homes in seven states participated in the program, which employed third-party vendors, known as enhanced care and coordination providers, to provide education to nursing facility staff. Hospitals, too, can benefit from the program because it may help reduce [...]