Bulletin Board
Bulletin Board
MedPAC Comments on Proposed Physician Fee Schedule
The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission has written to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to convey its views on CMS’s proposed revisions to Medicare physician payment policies for 2018. Among the issues MedPAC addresses in its comment letter are proposed payments to physicians for nonexcepted items and services provided in nonexcepted off-campus provider-based hospital departments, the Medicare shared savings program, and the Medicare diabetes prevention program. See CMS’s comment letter here.
MedPAC Comments on Proposed Medicare Outpatient Payment Rule
The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission has weighed in with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on its proposed regulation governing the 2018 hospital outpatient prospective payment system and ambulatory surgical center payment systems and quality reporting programs. Among the issues MedPAC addresses in its comment letter to CMS are the proposal to reduce Medicare reimbursement for 340B-covered prescription drugs; how to reinvest the savings such a payment cut would produce; the ability of hospitals to expand the services they offer at hospital-based outpatient departments; proposed changes in the Medicare [...]
Overutilization of ERs May Not be as Great as Perceived
Far fewer hospital emergency room visits are for medical problems better addressed in other settings, according to a new study. In a review of six years worth of data encompassing 424 million ER visits, researchers found that only 3.3 percent of those visits were truly “avoidable,” with the avoidable visits mostly involving problems ERs are not equipped to address, such as dental and mental health issues. This finding flies in the face of the conventional wisdom that people turn too quickly to hospital ERs for routine medical problems or use [...]
Medicare ACOs Showing Promise
Medicare’s Shared Savings Program and its accountable care organizations are showing promise as a means of reducing Medicare spending and improving the quality or care. Or so concludes the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General. According to a new OIG report, Over the first 3 years of the program, 428 participating Shared Savings Program ACOs served 9.7 million beneficiaries. During that time, most of these ACOs reduced Medicare spending compared to their benchmarks, achieving a net spending reduction of nearly $1 billion. At the [...]
Leave 340B Alone, CMS Advisory Group Says
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services should not significantly reduce Medicare payments for some prescription drugs. Or so says one of CMS’s own advisory panels. The agency’s Advisory Panel on Outpatient Prospective Payment reached this conclusion after listening to testimony from hospital industry stakeholders who told of the savings the federal government’s 340B prescription drug discount program produces and how those savings enable hospitals in low-income areas to help low-income patients who would not otherwise be able to afford their drugs and help improve access to care for low-income [...]