“Cures” Bill Gives NAUH Legislative Victory
The new 21st Century Cures Act includes something private safety-net hospitals have long advocated: socio-economic risk adjustment of Medicare’s hospital readmissions reduction program. NAUH has been urging Congress and the administration to introduce such a risk-adjustment component ever since the [...]
New Approach to Helping Patients With Complex Needs
Five foundations have joined forces to pursue new approaches to serving patients with complex medical needs. The Commonwealth Fund, the John A. Hartford Foundation, the Peterson Center on Healthcare, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and The SCAN Foundation engaged the [...]
MedPAC Talks Payments
At public meetings in Washington, D.C. last week, members of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission discussed the adequacy of current Medicare payments and whether they need updating in the next fiscal year. Among the payment areas MedPAC reviewed were inpatient [...]
A Look at Medicaid’s Immediate Future
With a new president taking office in January who vows to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, it is not clear what will happen to Medicaid, which currently covers 73 million Americans. A new paper from the Kaiser Family [...]
Medicaid Supplemental Payments Set to Evolve
New health care delivery and reimbursement systems and new federal regulations will result in changes in how states deploy their Medicaid resources through supplemental payments in the coming years. A new Commonwealth Fund report describes the kinds of supplemental Medicaid [...]
Report on Health Care Regulations Subject to Review
Under limited circumstances, Congress may employ a rarely used process to overturn rules and regulations issued by federal agencies. In a new report, the Congressional Research Service describes how this process works and lists regulations that could be subject to [...]
Profile of Nominee to Head CMS
President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Seema Verma, a health care consultant, to serve as administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. That agency runs the Medicare and Medicaid programs. In this capacity she would have enormous influence on [...]
Social Determinants and Health Care
Amid growing recognition that social factors play at least much a role in the health of communities as medical care, growing attention is being paid to how best to address those social determinants in a health care system. With increasing [...]
FAQ on New Medicaid Managed Care Rule
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has published an FAQ on the new regulation that governs the use of managed care when serving Medicaid and CHIP populations. Go here to find that FAQ and other links to other resources [...]
HHS OIG Previews 2017 Interests
The Office of the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has published a document presenting the areas on which it intends to focus in 2017. Among the Medicaid issues on which the OIG will focus [...]
