Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement
Relief Arrives For Rural And Small Hospitals
Reform bill ushers in $12 billion over the next decade. Financially struggling hospitals in rural areas and urban sites that serve a population of fewer than 1 million got a morale boost from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services March 31.
Starting with discharges on or after April 1, 2004, the Medicare reform bill will officially be walking the walk when it comes to improved disproportionate share reimbursement. CMS announced that $12 billion has been earmarked for better pay over the next ten years, effectively decreasing the outlier threshold for extra payments in unusually costly cases from $31,000 to $30,150.
The provisions in the new Medicare law also lift the cap on DSH payment adjustments from 5.25 percent to 12 percent for urban hospitals with fewer than 100 beds, sole community hospitals, and rural hospitals with fewer than 500 beds.
More good news: CMS has made permanent a single standardized amount to be used in determining Medicare payments to all hospitals -- not the previous two-tiered system that favored hospitals in large urban areas.
Lesson Learned: Rural and small urban hospitals should soon begin to feel the effects of better payment rates.
Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement
- Physicians:
McClellan Is To Docs As Scully Was To Hospitals?
New CMS administrator, with links to physicians, reaches out to embattled industry.
In one of his [...] - Health Plans:
Medicare Plans Due For 6.6-Percent Raise in 2005
The good news means more plans may join Medicare Advantage in the future.
Under payment rules [...] - Hospitals:
Relief Arrives For Rural And Small Hospitals
Reform bill ushers in $12 billion over the next decade.
Financially struggling hospitals in rural [...] - Health Savings Accounts:
What The New Treasury Guidance Means For HSAs - Medicare Reform:
Employers Won't Get Medicare Drug Subsidy If They Shift Too Many Costs To Retirees
Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal reported expert opinion suggesting that employers could still [...] - Managed Care:
Are Plans Doing The Right Thing With BIPA Funding?
The OIG may be checking the record to make sure.
Did your payment rates increase under [...] - Hospitals:
Feds Want To Increase Heart Transplant Oversight
OIG calls for an overhaul of centers' centrification process.
Heads up, heart transplant centers.
Changes in [...] - Coverage:
Medicare Covers New Wound Care Treatment
Good news for therapists, home health agencies and patients.
Home health patients with chronic wounds may [...] - Program Transmittal Roundup
Patients with chronic wounds may have a new source of treatment hope: electromagnetic therapy.
The Centers [...] - Bill Watch
The following bill was introduced in the House: HR 4054. A bill to require the [...]
