Bulletin Board
Bulletin Board
New Book Addresses Social Risk Factors in Medicare
In the new book Accounting for Social Risk Factors in Medicare Payment, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine addresses the question of what social risk factors might be worth considering in Medicare value-based payment programs and how those risk factors might be reflected in value-based payments. The book, the culmination of a five-part NASEM process, focuses on five social risk factors: socio-economic position race, ethnicity, and cultural context gender social relationships residential and community context Addressing such factors in Medicare value-based payments, the book finds, can help achieve [...]
MedPAC Testifies Before Congress
Last week Mark Miller, executive director of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, testified before the House Ways and Means Committee’s Health Subcommittee. In his testimony, Miller summarized and explained some of the key points MedPAC made in its March report to Congress, including: why MedPAC believes most post-acute-care payments are too high; why Medicare needs to reduce the incentives for hospitals and doctors to deliver more services; why it recommended no FY 2018 payment increases for long-term acute-care hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers, and skilled nursing facilities and reductions of payments [...]
Medicare’s Costs Can Be High for Low-Income Beneficiaries
Despite enjoying Medicare coverage, low-income seniors can still spend a significant portion of their limited income on costs Medicare does not cover. According to a new study published by the Commonwealth Fund, more than 25 percent of Medicare beneficiaries spend at least 20 percent of their income on health care – on things like premiums, cost-sharing, prescriptions, and dental and vision care, long-term care, and other services not covered by the federal program. These costs pose a problem for many because nearly half of all Medicare participants have incomes below [...]
States Get More Time to Improve Approach to Serving the Elderly, Disabled
The federal government is giving state three additional years to improve their Medicaid-funded efforts to help keep the elderly and the disabled in the community. The requirement, established in 2014 for implementation by 2019, requires states to do more to enable the elderly to remain in their homes rather than go to nursing homes and to help the disabled live and work in the community or at least have greater control of their own lives while residing in group home settings. Among the approaches states have been developing in response [...]
Hospital Uncompensated Care Down
As was surely expected, reforms introduced through implementation of the Affordable Care Act have driven down uncompensated care costs for many hospitals. How much? A new study published by the Commonwealth Fund offers the following findings: uncompensated care declines in expansion states are substantial relative to profit margins; for every dollar of uncompensated care costs hospitals in expansion states had in 2013, the Affordable Care Act erased 41 cents by 2015; and Medicaid expansion reduced uncompensated care burdens for safety-net hospitals that are not made whole by Medicaid disproportionate share [...]