National healthcare spending in 2018 grew at a rate of 4.6 percent to $3.6 trillion, which translated to about $11,172 per person, the Office of the Actuary at CMS recently reported.
The growth rate...
The request for applications (RFA) for Medicare’s Direct Contracting Professional and Global options is now open, according to an announcement on the initiative’s CMS Innovation Center...
As long-term and post-acute care (LTPAC) programs transition to value-based payment options, various challenges arise for skilled-nursing facilities (SNFs) and other long-term and post-acute care...
HHS dropped two healthcare price transparency rules earlier today. The first is a final rule requiring hospitals to make all standard charges, including payer-specific negotiated rates, public in a...
A value-based purchasing program run by CMS has been credited with the drop in 30-day hospital readmission rates through 2014. But a new analysis led by researchers at Harvard Medical School offers an...
A rule proposed by CMS on Tuesday would enable greater transparency and oversight of Medicaid supplemental payments to providers, which have proliferated in the last couple of years.
The Medicaid...
In July, CMS proposed in the Medicare Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) rule for calendar year (CY) 2020 to expand existing hospital price transparency requirements by mandating hospitals to...
A final rule released last week will increase Medicare payments to home health agencies by about 1.3 percent, or $250 million, in calendar year (CY) 2020 and establish a permanent home infusion therapy...
CMS last Thursday finalized a rule that will bump the bundled Medicare reimbursement rate for end-stage renal disease (ESRD) providers by $4.06 in 2020 and create a transitional add-on payment...
CMS recently finalized the final rules for the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule and the Outpatient Prospective Payment (OPPS) in 2020. The rules will notably retain all five levels of evaluation and...
More hospitals will share in incentive payments under Medicare’s Value-Based Purchasing Program in the 2020 fiscal year (FY) than will receive penalties, according to a new CMS announcement.
The...
Late last week, CMS started to accept applications for two new alternative payment models focusing on kidney and primary care, with the latter now facing a delayed implementation.
Both the Kidney Care...
In light of new value-based care models and creative partnerships between providers, CMS is ditching its pay-and-chase approach to reducing Medicare fraud, waste, and abuse and implementing a new...
A rule proposed by CMS earlier today aims to modernize Medicare’s physician self-referral law, which is also known as the Stark Law, in an effort to advance value-based care.
The Stark law...
A healthcare price transparency rule proposed earlier this year by CMS aims to empower patients by requiring the public disclosure of rates negotiated by hospitals and payers. But hospitals and other...
Hospitals rejoiced last week after a federal judge decided to toss Medicare’s most recent attempt to expand a site-neutral payment policy that would have reduced payments to hospital outpatient...
More than 90,000 clinicians are still waiting on the 2019 Advanced Alternative Payment Model (APM) bonus payment for their participation in 2017 and nine industry groups are demanding payment from...
The American Hospital Association (AHA), Community Oncology Alliance (COA), and other key stakeholders voiced concerns about a mandatory bundled payments model for radiation oncology slated to take...
CMS Administrator Seema Verma urged hospitals on Tuesday to accept new value-based care models and price transparency requirements or face greater administrative burden, less competition, and lower...
CMS recently called on industry stakeholders to suggest ways that the agency can reduce administrative burdens, and hospitals did not disappoint.
The federal agency received over 560 comments in...
