Appeal rights appear much narrower than many expected. Earlier this year, a federal appeals court issued an opinion on Barrows v. Becerra, a long-running class action lawsuit. Filed by a group of Medicare beneficiaries, the suit alleged they had to pay out of pocket for skilled nursing care—despite being hospitalized for over three days—because their […]
The final rules for fiscal year 2023 include a 3.8 percent payment increase for hospice providers, 2.5 percent increase for inpatient psychiatric facilities, and 3.2 percent boost for inpatient rehabilitation facilities. CMS has released final rules solidifying Medicare reimbursement rates for hospice providers, inpatient psychiatric facilities (IPFs), and inpatient rehabilitation facilities (IRFs) for fiscal year […]
The home- and community-based services quality measure set also aims to advance health equity and reduce health disparities for older adults and people with disabilities. CMS has released a quality measure set for home- and community-based services (HCBS), aiming to promote consistent quality measurement and data collection in the Medicaid HCBS program and improve health […]
Of the 12 states that have not expanded their Medicaid programs, four have taken legal, legislative, and/or budgetary actions this year with varying results. The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) has updated its state Medicaid expansion tracker, highlighting 2022 activity through July. The following summarizes activity in both expansion and non-expansion states. In January 2022, Georgia […]
More than 200,000 residents could be at risk of displacement if federal leaders establish minimum staffing requirements for nursing homes. Nursing homes would have to spend up to $10 billion per year and hire almost 188,000 nurses to comply with increased minimum staffing requirements, according to a report from the American Health Care Association (AHCA) […]
It includes proposed enhanced payments for the additional costs of purchasing domestically made NIOSH-approved surgical N95 respirators. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is proposing actions meant to advance health equity and improve access to care in rural communities by establishing policies for Rural Emergency Hospitals (REH) and providing for payment for certain behavioral […]
In addition to physician reimbursement cuts, CMS included changes to the Quality Payment Program in the CY 2023 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule proposed rule. In its recently released calendar year (CY) 2023 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) proposed rule, CMS proposed Quality Payment Program (QPP) changes to the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) and Advanced […]
The federal agency released the Home Health Prospective Payment System Rate Update proposed rule for CY23, which aims to permanently adjust Medicare payment based on PDGM. CMS proposes updated Medicare payment for home health agencies CMS is looking to apply a permanent prospective payment adjustment to the home health 30-day period payment rate to account […]
As Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) continues to evaluate the inclusion of telehealth services that were temporarily added to the Medicare telehealth services list during the COVID-19 public health emergency, they have finalized that certain services added to the Medicare telehealth services list will remain on the list through December 31, 2023. This […]
CMS released its annual Inpatient Prospective Payment System proposed rule April 18, which proposes a reimbursement boost for acute care hospitals. Here are 10 things to know about the 1,786-page proposed rule: Payment rate update. Under the proposed rule, acute care hospitals that report quality data and are meaningful users of EHRs will see a […]