New Series Examines Serving High-Need, High-Cost Patients
The Commonwealth Fund is launching a new series of case studies describing “innovative programs designed to address the needs of the nation’s high-need, high-cost patients, a group that accounts for a disproportionate share of health care spending.” Among the types [...]
ACA Slowly, Surely Improving Health Status
A new survey has found that the combination of Affordable Care Act-driven enhanced access to health insurance and improved performance by health care providers is producing better health status in communities across the U.S. The survey looked at health status [...]
Report to CMS on Risk Adjustment of Medicare Hospital Payments
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has issued its latest report to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on how to adjust Medicare payments to hospitals based on the socio-economic risk factors hospitals’ patients pose. At the [...]
Medicaid Directors Seek Help With Hepatitis C Drugs
The combination of new cures for hepatitis C, the high cost of those cures, and the large population of low-income people suffering from the disease has the nation’s Medicaid directors asking for help from Congress. “Medicaid programs have decades of [...]
Insurance Expansion and Health Status
A new study suggests that the Affordable Care Act’s insurance and Medicaid expansion is improving the health of both Medicaid recipients and the uninsured. According to the study, the health of Medicaid recipients and the uninsured was better in 2014 [...]
CMS Fills in the Blanks on Site-Neutral Payments
When Congress passed a budget bill last fall calling for the introduction of site-neutral payments for Medicare-covered outpatient services, hospitals wondered how this might affect their current provider-based outpatient facilities and their plans for future facilities or acquisitions. Now they [...]
Lessons in Serving Dual Eligibles
A new report examines the efforts of health plans to improve the delivery and coordination of care for dual eligibles: individuals covered by both Medicare and Medicaid. This population has received growing attention from policy-makers, including the Centers for Medicare [...]
CMS Proposes FY 2017 Outpatient Payments
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has revealed how it proposes paying hospitals for Medicare-covered outpatient services in 2017. Among other matters, the 764-page proposed regulation addresses: proposed rate increases for outpatient and ambulatory surgery center services; new site-neutral [...]
A Closer Look at Social Determinants of Health
The National Association of Urban Hospitals often points to the socio-economic status of the patients its members serve as constituting one of the greatest challenges private safety-net hospitals face. That challenge typically takes two major forms: how to serve such [...]
New Approach to Super-Utilizers: Free Housing
A Chicago hospital is experimenting with a new way of serving its most frequent uninsured ER visitors: arranging for free housing. The University of Illinois Hospital has found that many of its most frequent ER patients, while suffering from numerous [...]
