Medicare regulations

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 for home health care providers and inpatient rehabilitation facilities; why [...]

iqtsupport2017-05-22T06:00:12-04:00May 22, 2017|hospitals, Medicare, Medicare post-acute care, Medicare regulations, MedPAC|

Cures Law Addresses Shortcomings in Readmissions Program

The 21st Century Cures Act passed last December includes a provision that addresses perceived inequities in Medicare’s readmissions reduction program. Those inequities centered around holding safety-net hospitals, thought to care for more medically and socially challenging patients than the typical hospital, to the same standard as those typical hospitals when assessing penalties under Medicare’s hospital readmissions reduction program. While proponents of addressing this perceived inequity focused on addressing it through socio-economic risk adjustment, the Cures Act took another approach, as a recent article on the Health Affairs Blog explained: The Cures Act changes this by instructing HHS to set different [...]

iqtsupport2017-02-13T06:00:15-05:00February 13, 2017|Medicare regulations|

MedPAC Meets

Last week the independent agency that advises Congress on Medicare payment issues met for two days in Washington, D.C. Among the issues on the agenda of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission were: payments for hospital inpatient and outpatient services, ambulatory surgery centers, dialysis facilities, and hospice care payments for post-acute-care providers a unified payment system for post-acute-care services Medicare Advantage Medicare Part B and Part D payments Medicare-covered primary care services implementation of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 Go here for links to the issue briefs and presentations used at the MedPAC meeting and for a [...]

iqtsupport2017-01-19T06:00:38-05:00January 19, 2017|hospitals, Medicare, Medicare regulations, MedPAC|

Bundled Payments Reduce Hip, Knee Replacement Costs

Medicare’s bundled payment program for knee and hip replacements is reducing the cost of such treatments, a study has found. According to a new study in JAMA Internal Medicine, the Medicare bundled payment program, known as the Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement program, has driven down the cost of the those joint replacements more than 20 percent or $5500 a case. Most of the savings have been derived through a significant decrease in the use of post-acute care, according to the study. This decrease occurred, moreover, at a time when Medicare spending on joint replacement rose five percent. Learn more [...]

iqtsupport2017-01-12T16:35:59-05:00January 12, 2017|Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Medicare, Medicare regulations|