Insurance

Final rule reduces burdens to critical access hospitals, rural clinics; loosens physician supervision requirements.

Attendees at the 167th Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), convening at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York City, appreciated Sunday's opportunity to hash out practical day-to-day issues at Meet the Author: Evidence-Based Guide to Antidepressant Medications and Antipsychotic Medications, with editor Anthony J. Rothschild, MD, director of the Center for Psychopharmacologic Research and Treatment, at University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Since the Obama administration launched its accountable care initiative as part of healthcare reform in 2012, the CMS has announced which hospital and physician networks in one of the programs have met cost targets and received shared savings. But so far, it has published little data on quality of care delivered by these networks, which were designed to deliver better care as well as lower costs for Medicare patients.

The Obama administration says the number of Medicare patients returning to hospitals within 30 days fell further in 2013, amounting to 150,000 fewer readmissions since January 2012.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) reported that between 2002 and 2010, elderly healthcare spending grew at the slowest rate among all age groups, which, according to CMS, can be attributed to the recession.

Anthony J. Rothschild, MD, says that barriers to expensive antipsychotic drugs are shortsighted. He adds that the American Psychiatric Association, in accordance with some in Congress, recently rejected a CMS decision that would have restricted the number of antidepressants and antipsychotics Medicare beneficiaries could receive.

Despite the considerable resources designated to PCORI, its future remains tenuous.

The CMS intends increase Medicare payments to hospices and also make several tweaks to policy definitions and procedures to ensure more accurate reimbursement.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed a rule this week that would reduce payments for hospital readmissions and hospital-acquired conditions in 2015.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services late Wednesday issued a proposed rule for 2015 that reduces payment for readmissions and hospital-acquired conditions, but provides no changes to the controversial two-midnight rule.

An advisory panel to the CMS voted against recommending an annual low-dose CT scan for high-risk individuals citing no benefit over the harm of false-positives.

Keith Dunleavy, MD, president, CEO, and chairman of the board for Inovalon, Inc, says that healthcare is enormously complex, and that it's being driven across a broad range of audiences.

Left as-is, current exchange formuarly and network search technology has the potential for a lot of consumer dissatisfaction and backlash.

The American Journal of Managed Care publishes a first-of-its-kind study comparing different types of health insurance plans and different levels of co-payment, to see how varieties of coverage affect access to therapeutic drug classes.

Look beyond the EHR incentive program. A national effort to turn CMS's recent release of Medicare physician payment data into useful, actionable data visualizations is the hottest HIT challenge right now.