hospitals

ACA Repeal Would Drive Up Uninsured, Uncompensated Care

At the same time that the Trump administration announced that it has asked a federal court to repeal the entire Affordable Care Act, the Urban Institute has published a report detailing the potential impact of the health care reform law’s repeal. According to the Urban Institute report, repealing the entire Affordable Care Act would add almost 20 million Americans to the ranks of the uninsured. Medicaid and CHIP enrollment would fall by 15.4 million people and millions of others would lose the tax credits they used to purchase insurance. Some would purchase insurance with limited benefits and individual plan premiums [...]

iqtsupport2019-03-29T06:00:00-04:00March 29, 2019|Affordable Care Act, health care reform, hospitals, Medicaid|

Mixed Verdict: Home Health Leads to More Readmissions But Lower Costs

Readmission rates are greater for patients discharged from hospitals to home health care than they are for those discharged to skilled nursing facilities but home health services cost so much less than nursing homes that home health saves money even with the higher numbers of hospital readmissions. This is one of the major findings of a new study comparing differences in outcomes for patients who are admitted to skilled nursing facilities upon discharge from the hospital to those for patients who go direct home and receive home health services. The study also found no meaningful differences in patient mortality or [...]

iqtsupport2019-03-22T06:00:57-04:00March 22, 2019|Alternative payment models, hospitals, Medicare, Medicare post-acute care, Medicare reimbursement policy|

MACPAC Makes DSH, UPL Recommendations

Changes could come in Medicaid DSH and UPL payments if new MACPAC recommendations are adopted. Last week the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission released its annual report to Congress, with most of the report focusing on its analysis and recommendations for policy updates involving Medicaid disproportionate share hospital payments (Medicaid DSH) and Medicaid upper payment limit payments (UPL payments). With Affordable Care Act-mandated cuts in Medicaid DSH payments scheduled to start in FY 2020 – this coming October – MACPAC recommended that these cuts be reduced and phased in over a longer period of time “…to give states [...]

iqtsupport2019-03-20T13:00:48-04:00March 20, 2019|hospitals, MACPAC, Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission, Medicaid disproportionate share, Medicaid DSH, Medicaid DSH allotments, Medicaid upper-payment limit|

Surprise Medical Bills Lead Patients to Change Hospitals

Patients who receive surprise medical bills are more likely to change hospitals than those who do not, a new study has found. According to an analysis of behavior by obstetrics patients, …11 percent of mothers experienced a surprise out-of-network bill with their first delivery, and this was associated with an increase of 13 percent in the odds of switching hospitals for the second delivery, compared to mothers who did not experience a surprise bill. The study found that this switching often paid dividends for those who switched: Mothers who switched hospitals after a surprise out-of-network bill reduced their relative risk of receiving [...]

iqtsupport2019-03-08T06:00:41-05:00March 8, 2019|hospitals|

State to Experiment with Global Budgets for Rural Areas

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania plans to launch an experiment in which participating health insurers will fund global budgets to care for residents served by selected rural hospitals. The program seeks to preserve access to care in rural parts of the state by stabilizing the financial health of struggling rural hospitals. According to a Pennsylvania Department of Health news release, The Rural Health Model is an alternative payment model, transitioning hospitals from a fee-for-service model to a global budget payment. Instead of hospitals getting paid when someone visits the hospital, they will receive a predictable amount of money. Payment for the [...]

iqtsupport2019-03-07T13:00:31-05:00March 7, 2019|Alternative payment models, hospitals, Pennsylvania|

800 Hospitals Face Medicare Penalties

800 hospitals will see their Medicare payments reduced one percent this year because they are among the 25 percent of hospitals in the U.S. with the highest rate of hospital-acquired conditions. Among the 800 hospitals are 110 that are being penalized for the fifth year in a row. Medicare’s hospital-acquired condition reduction program tracks a variety of medical problems, including infections, blood clots, sepsis, hip fractures, bedsores, and others. Every year, the 25 percent of eligible providers – the program excludes significant numbers of hospitals – are penalized even if their performance for hospital-acquired conditions is superior to the previous [...]

iqtsupport2019-03-05T06:00:59-05:00March 5, 2019|hospitals, Medicare, Medicare regulations|

Hospitals Show Mixed Results on Investments

Some hospitals are doing much better than others with their investments. According to a new report, several large health systems have recently reported major losses with their investments. On the other hand, a report late last year found that roughly half of hospitals’ net margins over the past two years has come from investment income. Learn more from the Becker’s Hospital Review article “Investment income made up almost 50% of hospitals' net margin in past 2 years.”

iqtsupport2019-03-04T06:00:01-05:00March 4, 2019|hospitals|

Grassley, Senate Finance to Resume Probe of Non-Profit Hospitals

The Senate Finance Committee will launch a review of non-profit hospitals and whether they are meeting the formal community benefit standards required to justify their tax-free status. This subject has long been of interest to committee chairman Chuck Grassley, who has returned as committee chair. He pursued the same question of the hospitals’ non-profit status and community benefit provide while leading the Senate Finance Committee from 2003 to 2007 and also as a member of the committee, although not its chair, in recent years. In a letter to the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, which is responsible for reviewing [...]

iqtsupport2019-03-01T06:00:44-05:00March 1, 2019|hospitals|

A New Community Benefit: Free Medical School

A health system has decided on a new approach to the community benefit spending that is required to enable it to retain its non-profit status: free medical school. Kaiser Permanente, the non-profit California-based health system that will launch a new medical school in 2020, has announced that it will waive tuition for students in its first five graduating classes and include the lost revenue associated with free tuition in its community benefit spending. Company officials also hope the freedom from the debt associated with medical school loans will encourage students to pursue careers in family medicine and lower-paying specialties. Learn [...]

iqtsupport2019-02-22T06:00:25-05:00February 22, 2019|hospitals|

Health Care Lobbying Rose in 2018

Hospitals and health systems spent $99.7 million lobbying in Washington, D.C. last year, just barely more than in 2017 but much less than in 2009, when the focus of health care lobbying was the Affordable Care Act, then just a proposal and not a law. The issues on which they spent the most money lobbying were the 340B program, site-neutral Medicare payments for outpatient services, safety-net hospitals, Medicare-for-all proposals, and Medicaid funding. Learn more about what hospitals spent their lobbying money on, who were the biggest lobbying spenders, and where industry groups figure in the overall spending in the Healthcare [...]

iqtsupport2019-02-21T06:00:17-05:00February 21, 2019|hospitals|