CMS given more time for final notice on ‘two-midnight’ payment cut
Editor's Note The US District Court for the District of Columbia has given the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) another month to issue a final notice justifying cutting inpatient payments by 0.2% in conjunction with its “two-midnight” rule, The March 18 AHA News Now reports. CMS has until…
Editorial
Many new healthcare payment models have cropped up in recent years, all with an eye toward rewarding providers for quality of service. In 2013, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) started a Bundled Payment for Care Improvement (BPCI) pilot with voluntary participation from numerous US facilities. Under BPCI,…
Two hospitals face value-based payment - which one does your OR resemble?
H ealthcare trends come and go, but one that shows no signs of stopping is value-based payment. Just this year, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services launched the Comprehensive Care for Joint Replace-ment (CCJR) model, which mandates bundled payment for two of the most common surgical procedures in the…
Preop scale predicts readmission after total hip
Editor's Note In this study, a new risk-stratification scale identified high-risk patients for readmission within 30 days after total hip replacement with 89.1% accuracy. Nearly 269,000 hip replacement patients from the State Inpatient Database were analyzed, and factors associated with an increased risk of readmission were used to create the…
More than 5,000 new codes will be added to ICD-10 in FY 2017
Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced March 9 that about 1,900 diagnosis codes and 3,651 hospital inpatient procedure codes will be added to the ICD-10 coding system in FY 2017, AHA News Now reports. The large number of…
CMS issues ICD-10 assessment toolkit
Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has released a toolkit to help healthcare providers track and respond to ICD-10 performance indicators. The toolkit includes tips and resources for: assessing ICD-10 progress using key performance indicators to identify potential issues that could affect productivity or cash flow addressing…
Physician practices spend $15.4 billion annually on quality reporting
Editor's Note Physician practices each year spend 785 hours per physician to track and report quality measures for Medicare and private health insurers at a cost of more than $15.4 billion a year, this study finds. Eight in 10 physicians surveyed reported spending more effort on quality measures now than…
Medicare bundled payments improve outcomes for total joint patients
Editor's Note Implementing bundled payments for Medicare patients having total joint replacements resulted in improved quality of care and outcomes and reduced costs, finds this study presented March 2 at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons. As a pilot site for Medicare’s Bundled Payment for Care…
HHS: Hospitals responding to incentives to reduce readmissions
Editor's Note This study from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) found that readmission trends are consistent with the response by hospitals to incentives to reduce readmissions, including financial penalties, as mandated by the Affordable Care Act. No evidence was found that changes in observation-unit stays accounted for…
CMS proposes Medicare Advantage changes for 2017
Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on February 19 announced proposed changes to the Medicare Advantage program for CY 2017, which would increase payment rates by a net 1.35%, the February 19 Modern Healthcare reports. When factoring in the risk coding tendencies, Medicare Advantage insurers’ revenue…
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