Addressing Socio-Economic Challenges Through Medicaid Payment Policies
Amid the growing awareness of the impact of social factors on health, policy-makers are increasingly interested in finding ways to address those factors through state Medicaid programs. In a new blog post, the journal Health Affairs offers six ways for [...]
New Report Details Key Health Care Provisions in February Budget Bill
The Congressional Research Service has published a new report describing the health care-related provisions in the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 that Congress passed last month to fund the federal government. A major part of that law was the Advancing [...]
Study Looks at Medicaid and Managed Care
A new Commonwealth Fund study examines how managed care plans have tackled serving new members in Affordable Care Act-authorized Medicaid expansion states. According to the report, these managed care organizations have …focused on identifying and helping high-risk populations and addressing [...]
MACPAC Meets
Members of the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission met in Washington, D.C. last week to discuss a number of Medicaid and CHIP meetings. The following is MACPAC’s summary of this meeting. MACPAC’S March 2018 meeting began with a [...]
Readmissions Program Working; Expansion in Order?
The Medicare hospital readmissions reduction program is working, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. And it may even be worth expanding to additional medical conditions, MedPAC members believe. According to MedPAC, hospital readmissions among patients with medical conditions covered [...]
MedPAC Meets
The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, which advises Congress on Medicare payment issues, met last week in Washington, D.C. Among the issues on MedPAC’s agenda were: paying for sequential stays in a unified Medicare payment system for post-acute care encouraging Medicare [...]
New Bill Proposes Greater 340B Accountability
A new bill proposed last week by Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) seeks to foster greater accountability among participants in the federal government’s section 340B prescription drug discount program. The three-page bill is called the Ensuring the Value of the 340B [...]
Lay Outreach Workers Reduce Readmissions
A community hospital in Kentucky has found that employing lay outreach workers to assist patients recently discharged from the hospital can significantly reduce hospital readmissions. In a research project, the hospital identified high-risk patients and, upon their discharge from the [...]
States Adopt New Tools to Control Rising Medicaid Drug Costs
Faced with continued increases in the cost of prescription drugs in their Medicaid programs, states are pursuing new approaches in attempts to control those rising costs. In the past states have employed approaches such as beneficiary prescription limits, negotiating supplemental [...]
Community Health Center Patients Often Have Housing Problems
Nearly half of the patients served by community health centers have housing problems, according to a new report published by the Journal of the American Medical Association. Among those problems: two or more homes in the past year alone, difficulty [...]
