Bulletin Board
Bulletin Board
Pay Issues Slow Telehealth Spread
While most health care organizations and providers intend to make greater use of telehealth in the coming years, the manner and speed with which that use grows is being limited in part by reimbursement issues. A survey conducted for the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives found that About half of the study respondents listed reimbursement as a limitation, noting that some payers have been slow to reimburse telehealth visits and or reimburse at rates that are lower than face-to-face care. Survey participants reported using telehealth in three primary ways: [...]
MedPAC Meets
The independent agency that advises Congress and the administration on Medicare payment policies met last week in Washington, D.C. Among the issues discussed at the meeting of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission were: the merit-based incentive payment system a unified payment system for post-acute care telehealth a redesign of Medicare’s hospital value incentive program Find the presentations and issue briefs for these subjects and others discussed at the MedPAC meeting here, on MedPAC’s web site.
House Committee to Hold 340B Hearing
The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s oversight subcommittee will hold a hearing on Wednesday about the 340B Drug Pricing Program. At the hearing, titled “Examining How Covered Entities Utilize the 340B Drug Pricing Program,” the subcommittee hopes …to hear directly from entities participating in the program to get a better understanding of how the program is used, including how much money is saved, the types of drugs purchased and prescribed within the program, how entities track their savings, and how those savings are used to improve patient care. Learn more [...]
340B Changes Would Hurt Hospital Margins
Proposed changes in the federal section 340B prescription drug discount program would hurt hospital margins. So says Moody’s Investors Service, the credit rating agency. According to Moody’s, the margins of non-profit hospitals are already under pressure because revenue increases are not keeping pace with prescription drug costs. Reductions of payments under the 340B program recently proposed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services would make a challenging situation worse, Moody’s speculates. Under the 340B program, eligible hospitals purchase prescription drugs at a discount, supply them to eligible outpatients, and [...]
Suit Claims Low Medicaid Rates are Discriminatory
A lawsuit filed in state courts in California argues that the state’s low Medicaid payments amount to discrimination against the state’s large Hispanic Medicaid population. California pays among the lowest rates in the country to physicians, making health care inaccessible for some, and the suit maintains that this is a civil rights issue in which low rates amount to discrimination. The suit is based on state anti-discrimination and equal protection laws, and many other states have similar laws on the books. Observers question whether the low rates constitute discrimination against [...]