Headline
The latest stories from AHA Today.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services today posted its updated version of the Medicare Outpatient Observation Notice, a standard notice that all hospitals and critical access hospitals must provide effective March 6, 2017 to all Medicare beneficiaries who receive outpatient…
Senate Finance Committee leaders today issued a staff report on “concurrent and overlapping surgeries,” which the report describes as a practice involving a surgeon scheduling and conducting operations on two different patients during the same period of time. The report summarizes findings from a…
The AHA yesterday asked the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission to consider certain issues before making draft recommendations related to provider consolidation and stand-alone emergency departments. MedPAC last month discussed, in the context of vertical integration, whether it should advance new…
The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General today issued a final rule amending the safe harbors to the anti-kickback statute and civil monetary penalty rules, as authorized by the Affordable Care Act and other laws. As urged by the AHA, the new safe harbor…
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention yesterday released a final report on a Winnable Battles project, launched in 2010 to achieve certain public health targets.
The Root Cause Coalition, formed last year to address hunger and other social determinants of preventable chronic health conditions, today held its First National Summit on the Social Determinants of Health.
The AHA’s United Against the Flu Campaign will host a Twitter chat Wednesday, Dec. 7 at 12 p.m. ET as part of National Influenza Vaccination Week. Featuring AHA Chief Medical Officer Jay Bhatt, D.O., the chat will emphasize the continued benefit of flu vaccination in December and beyond…
Court proceedings got underway today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in Aetna’s bid to acquire Humana. The Department of Justice filed suit July 21 to block the acquisition, along with Anthem’s proposed acquisition of Cigna, saying it would be harmful for…
Hospitals participating in the AHA’s third-quarter 2016 RACTrac survey report appealing 45% of all Recovery Audit Contractor claim denials, with 60% found to have no overpayment. Hospitals also report that RACs cite inpatient coding error as the most common reason for complex claim denials,…
People who smoke an average of less than one cigarette per day over their lifetime have a 64% higher risk of earlier death than never smokers, and those who smoke between one and 10 cigarettes a day have an 87% higher risk, according to a study by researchers at the National Cancer Institute…