News

In a letter to the editor published by Modern Healthcare, AHA President and CEO Rick Pollack responds to a recent report on hospital consolidation from Elevance Health — the large, for-profit commercial insurer formerly known as Anthem that dominates many insurer markets and earned nearly $2 billion in net profit in the second quarter of this year alone.

AHA Aug. 9 called the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ $957 million cut to Medicare Disproportionate Share Hospitals for fiscal year 2024 “simply unacceptable,” citing the agency’s “remarkable lack of transparency” in how the inpatient prospective payment system final rule calculates the uninsured rate and its impact on DSH payments.

The Association for Health Care Resource & Materials Management, an AHA professional membership group for health care supply chain professionals, presented its George R. Gossett Leadership Award to Dee Donatelli, senior director at symplr Spend, at its annual conference in Orlando, Fla.

“Health insurance should be a bridge to medical care, not a barrier. Yet too many commercial health insurance policies often delay, disrupt and deny medically necessary care to patients,” writes AHA President and CEO Rick Pollack in an op-ed today in U.S. News & World Report.

The AHA has elected eight new members to its Board of Trustees for three-year terms beginning Jan. 1.

The Food and Drug Administration approved the first pill to treat postpartum depression in adults, whose symptoms can range from sadness and loss of energy to cognitive impairment and suicidal ideation. Patients would take the drug (Zurzuvae) for 14 days.

U.S. and other allied nations’ cybersecurity agencies urged software vendors to implement secure design practices and organizations to implement a centralized patch management system and apply timely patches, noting that malicious actors in 2022 most often targeted known vulnerabilities. 

The federal government must vacate nationwide its federal fee increase and batching rule for the No Surprises Act’s independent dispute resolution process for certain out-of-network providers and group health plans because they violate the Administrative Procedures Act’s notice-and-comment requirement, a federal judge in Texas ruled Aug. 3, siding with the Texas Medical Association and other health care providers challenging the seven-fold fee increase and restrictions on batching related claims in a single payment dispute. 

The AHA filed its

On today’s episode, I talk with three health care leaders affiliated with the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB): Terri Poe, chief nursing officer at UAB Medicine; Maria Rodriguez Shirey, de

51 senators urged Senate leaders to avert $8 billion in annual payment cuts to the Medicaid Disproportionate Share Hospital program, scheduled to begin Oct. 1.

HHS alerts organizations to Rhysida ransomware.

FDA last month approved a new long-acting monoclonal antibody to prevent RSV in this age group.

The Sept. 12-13 sessions seek input on whether to permit telemedicine prescribing for certain controlled substances without an in-person evaluation.

Pfizer will ship certain sterile injectable products directly to customers due to high demand after a tornado struck the plant that makes them.

For years, many commercial health insurers treated coverage for mental health or substance use disorders (SUD) very differently than for medical and surgical benefits.

At its National Human Trafficking Prevention Summit, the Department of Health and Human Services announced a national innovation challenge to prevent human trafficking of women and girls.

As some members of Congress propose to weaken Medicare’s prohibition on physician self-referral to new physician-owned hospitals and ease restrictions on their growth, new data from Dobson | DaVanzo show that POHs publicly report on fewer Medicare quality measures and perform worse on readmission penalties than full-service community hospitals

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration released a report reviewing the four principal funding sources for states to finance coordinated specialty care and other team-based behavioral health services for patients experiencing first episode psychosis, the early period of symptoms, as well as innovative strategies adopted by five states. 

Jonathan Schreiber, Cedars-Sinai vice president of community engagement, shares how 2023 Foster G. McGaw Prize finalist Cedars-Sinai Medical Center works with federally qualified health centers and other community partners to advance health and health equity in Los Angeles County.