Medicare
The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission today approved a recommendation to reduce emergency department payment rates by 30% for off-campus stand-alone EDs located within six miles of an on-campus hospital ED.
The leaders of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee last night released a discussion draft of bipartisan legislation to address the opioid crisis, and announced an April 11 hearing on the bill with the goal of marking up legislation this spring.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will host an April 5 webinar to update health care providers and others as it rolls out new Medicare cards to beneficiaries that replace the Social Security-based beneficiary number with a new Medicare beneficiary identifier.
The MedPAC should not finalize its draft recommendation to reduce payments for off-campus stand-alone emergency departments located within six miles of an on-campus hospital ED.
A federal judge has asked the AHA to provide suggestions on behalf of hospitals and health systems for how the HHS can reduce the backlog of Medicare billing appeals awaiting adjudication at the Administrative Law Judge level.
The Physician-Focused Payment Model Technical Advisory Committee this week recommended that Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar approve a Medicare payment demonstration to test two alternative payment models to support people with advanced illness.
The price of the 20 most prescribed brand-name drugs in the Medicare Part D program increased an average 12% per year between 2012 and 2017, about 10 times more than the average annual rate of inflation.
Axios Vitals recent story on hospitals’ Medicare margins seemed to cherry pick data from a March Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) report to Congress to imply that hospitals “lose money” on Medicare because they are allegedly inefficient.
Connecticut hospitals invested $1.7 billion in community benefit activities in 2016, according to a new report by the Connecticut Hospital Association.