Bulletin Board
Bulletin Board
MedPAC to CMS: Speed Up Move to New Post-Acute Payment System
Medicare should adopt a unified system for post-acute-care payments even earlier than its target date of 2024. Or so the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission told Congress. MedPAC’s idea? Implement such a system by 2021 and phase it in over a three-year transition period, the agency said in its annual report and recommendations to Congress Learn more about what MedPAC recommended and why it recommended it in this McKnight’s Long-Term Care News article. Find MedPAC’s annual report to Congress here.
MedPAC Delivers Annual Report to Congress
The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission has issued its annual report and recommendations to Congress. The major issues addressed in the report include: implementing a unified payment system for post-acute care reforming Medicare payment for drugs under Part B redesigning the merit-based incentive payment system (MIPS) and strengthening advanced alternative payment models using premium support for Medicare the relationship between clinician services and other Medicare services payments from drug and device manufacturers to physicians and teaching hospitals in 2015 the medical device industry stand-alone emergency departments hospital and skilled nursing facility [...]
States Lag in Reducing Nursing Home Utilization
States are not making adequate progress toward keeping seniors and the disabled out of nursing homes by making greater use of home and community-based services. Or so concludes a new study from AARP. According to the study, only nine states and Washington, D.C. spend more on home and community-based services and long-term services and supports than on nursing homes. Minnesota leads the nation, spending 69 percent of its long-term-care money on home and community-based services. Other leaders include Washington state (65 percent), New Mexico (64 percent), and Alaska (63 percent). [...]
The Prospect of a Medicaid Work Requirement
Over the past three years a dozen states have proposed establishing a work requirement for eligibility for their Medicaid programs and in its proposed FY 2018, the Trump administration has called for extending the ability to impose such a requirement to all states. But how would a Medicaid work requirement work? To whom would it apply and what kinds of work might satisfy such a requirement for the approximately 22 million Medicaid recipients (out of 76 million total recipients) to whom it might apply? A new Commonwealth Fund report looks [...]
Medicare Delays New and Expanded Bundled Payment Programs
Medicare has delayed the launch of its mandatory Medicare Cardiac Rehabilitation Incentive Payment program until January 1. It also has delayed the expansion of its Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement program through a new Surgical Hip and Femur Fracture Treatment program. Originally scheduled to begin on May 20 and then pushed back to July 1, now it, too, will not begin until January 1. Medicare’s Acute Myocardial Infarction program and Coronary Artery Bypass Graft program will still begin on July 1. For further information, see this Federal Register notice announcing [...]