Editor's Note
The US Department of Health & Human Services Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released its 2016 Work Plan announcing new initiatives for ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs), the ASCA News Digest reports.
The initiatives include:
- Review the appropriateness of Medicare’s methodology for setting ASC payment rates.
- Revitalize outdated evaluations that found problems with Medicare’s quality oversight system.
- Conduct two reviews of hospital owned ASCs: One to analyze the number of provider-based facilities that hospitals own and the extent to which Medicare has methods to oversee provider-based billing. The second to review and compare Medicare payments for physician office visits in provider-based clinics and freestanding clinics to determine the difference in payments made for similar procedures.

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