“It really undermines what the physicians are doing at the point of care, and it’s bad policy,” says Doug Wolfe, co-founder and partner of the Miami-based law firm Wolfe Pincavage. UnitedHealthcare’s attempt to “Monday morning quarterback” emergency room visits by retroactively denying emergency claims is not only likely a violation of the prudent layperson standard, […]
HHS recently extended the deadline to use COVID-19 relief funds to the end of the month, but some providers say they still need more time. The American Hospital Association (AHA) is seeking more time for healthcare providers with unspent COVID-19 relief funds. The deadline to use COVID-19 relief funds is approaching for many providers. According […]
The Supreme Court’s decision in California v Texas ended one lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act but may have left room for future legal action. Since the Supreme Court dismissed California v Texas on June 17, payers and healthcare leaders have vocalized their support for the decision, their readiness to continue building on the Affordable […]
The pandemic has only made the trend worse, as 33% of hospital executives report average claims denial rates of 10% or more. Hospital claim denial rates have hit new highs, with a 20% increase in those rates over the past five years, suggesting that better claims denial management processes are necessary, finds a new […]
MACPAC’s June 2021 report to Congress included findings about non-emergency medical transportation benefits in Medicaid programs that could prove useful for benefits design. A small fraction of the Medicaid population utilizes non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) benefits, but for that community of beneficiaries NEMT programs can be indispensable, a MACPAC report recently found. It has been […]
The American College of Emergency Physicians said that it “firmly believes that the new policy is in direct violation of the federal Prudent Layperson Standard.” Calling it a “dangerous decision” and a “scare tactic,” the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) is condemning UnitedHealthcare’s recent announcement to retroactively deny emergency care claims. “ACEP firmly believes […]
Physicians who institute best practices bring in more revenue and profit than those who do not, and this can be the difference between being successful and being out of business. What’s the difference between a highly successful practice and one that just gets by? Oftentimes, it comes down to focusing on a handful of key […]
Despite a fiscally challenging year for the healthcare industry, physician compensation for most specialties has remained the same or has slightly increased, a new report from the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) reveals. However, most specialties showed an overall decrease in productivity in 2020. The report utilized data from 185,000 providers spanning over 6,700 organizations, […]
An industry through leader recaps current challenges to traditional reimbursement models for Medical Economics®. Limited by the slow pace of change in traditional reimbursement models, shifts in the paradigm for patient care have also lagged far behind the possibilities created by transformative technology. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed that, catalyzing improvements in reimbursement by […]
Educated guesses and imprecise, stopgap efforts aren’t enough. Revenue cycles need precise strategies to identify exactly where leakage occurs and implement solid processes to stop leakage before it starts. Even before COVID-19, 250-bed hospitals lost $4.7–$11 million a year from mid–revenue cycle leakage. Now, pandemic-fueled volume losses and razor-thin margins mean that hospitals can no […]










