Data-Sharing Could Help Address “High-Fliers”
A new study suggests that hospitals might better serve frequent emergency room patients if they share data with one another. According to a new report in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, nearly 70 percent of “high-fliers” – patients known to make [...]
CMS Unveils New Medicaid Managed Care Regulation
For the first time in more than 20 years, the federal government is introducing major changes in how it regulates Medicaid managed care. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services describes the 1425-page rule as aligning Medicaid managed care with [...]
Do Medicare Patient Satisfaction Surveys Foster Opioid Abuse?
A coalition of physicians and medical providers has questioned whether Medicare’s patient satisfaction surveys indirectly encourage physicians to prescribe opioids to help their patients with pain problems. The New York Times reports that coalition participants …filed a petition Wednesday with [...]
Could Housing Support Help Medicaid Behavioral Health Patients?
Amid indications that assisting with permanent supportive housing can be a cost-effective, evidence-based way of helping to address the behavioral health needs of some Medicaid recipients, housing and behavioral health groups are beginning to take a closer look at how [...]
Readmissions Reduction Target Too High?
Medicare’s goal of reducing hospital readmissions 20 percent – a key aspect of its hospital readmissions reduction program - may be too ambitious, researchers have concluded after evaluating the results of a special Connecticut effort to reduce readmissions. In that [...]
Hospitals Turn to Community Health Workers to Prevent Readmissions
It’s a new twist on an old concept: employ peers of low-income patients to go out into the community and work with those recently hospitalized to ensure that they are getting the care and assistance they need to recover from [...]
Low Participation Plagues Dual-Eligibles Demo
A federal demonstration program that seeks to improve care for those eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid is suffering from under-participation. This perspective was presented during last week’s meeting of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, the independent federal agency that [...]
Safety Net Still Needed, Study Finds
Despite Affordable Care Act policies that have enabled millions of Americans to obtain health insurance, the health care safety net is still needed. Or so concludes a new report from the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute’s Center on Health Insurance [...]
MedPAC Addresses Issues at April Meeting
Last week the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission met in Washington, D.C. On its agenda were the following issues on which MedPAC is advising Congress: the development of a unified prospective payment system for post-acute care improving Medicare Part D Medicare [...]
Academy Offers Practices to Improve Care for Disadvantaged Patients
The National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine has published a new report that acknowledges the challenges faced by hospitals that care for socio-economically challenged patients and offers suggestions for how to serve those patients more effectively. The report, Systems [...]
