GAO Looks at Supplemental Medicaid Payments
Following up its own 2012 report that identified more than 500 hospitals receiving supplemental Medicaid payments that resulted in Medicaid payment surpluses, the U.S. Government Accountability Office has taken a broader look at supplemental payments state Medicaid programs make to [...]
MedPAC Meets, Considers Issues
Members of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) met last week in Washington, D.C. to discuss policies and potential recommendations to Congress on a number of Medicare payment issues. Among the issues on the agenda were: developing a unified payment [...]
MedPAC Sees Room for More Telehealth
“If we are going to be relevant to the customers who will age into Medicare one day, we need to be offering these kinds of alternatives.” That alternative is telehealth services and the statement came from a member of the [...]
New Study Links Health, Housing
Low-income people with affordable housing are healthier than those who lack affordable housing. Or so concludes a new report from the Center for Outcomes Research and Education. According to the organization, its study is …one of the first studies to [...]
Improving Insurance Enrollment for Legal Immigrants
While the Affordable Care Act has led to impressive increases in the number of Americans with health insurance, the current enrollment poses a number of challenges for legal immigrants: those in the U.S. legally who lack insurance and are qualified [...]
Hospitals, Non-Profit Status, and Community Benefit
For years debate has raged over what non-profit hospitals must do to retain that non-profit status. That debate has gone from a general concept of what constitutes “community benefit” to local government challenges to the non-profit status of hospitals based [...]
Hospitals Not Using Observation Status to Avoid Readmissions Penalties
Hospitals are not moving returning patients to observation status to avoid incurring financial penalties under Medicare’s hospital readmissions reduction program, according to new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Since that program’s inception, more than 3300 hospitals have [...]
Do Return ER Visits Yield Better Outcomes?
Patients who visit hospital emergency rooms for care, return home, and then return to the ER within 30 days have better outcomes than those who are admitted to the hospital from the ER. And their care costs less as well. [...]
Cutting ER Visits: Harder Than Expected
The first two years of major expansion of access to health insurance under the Affordable Care Act did not produce the significant reduction in hospital ER visits that many expected. Or so reports a new study from the Centers for [...]
Medicaid Implications of the President’s FY 2017 Proposed Budget
The National Association of Medicaid Directors has published a detailed memo outlining how President Obama’s proposed FY 2017 would affect Medicaid. See that memo here.
