Contrary to widespread hopes, the growth in telehealth brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic probably won’t lower health care costs. But it may make some services more widely accessible. A new Kaiser Family Foundation study compares average 2020 commercial insurance payments for evaluation and management and mental health therapy claims for services provided via […]
Medical billing outsourcing services are services in which a healthcare provider hires a medical billing service provider outside their practice to do all the billing. The main types of services in medical billing outsourcing are the front end and back end. The front-end is in charge of the patient experience, while the back-end is in […]
The Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) has launched more than 50 alternative payment and care delivery model tests, with 33 models now or still operational, according to CMMI’s sixth report to Congress on its progress. These model tests have impacted the lives of millions of patients. In the two-year period covering the report, […]
Ultimately, a CDI program is only as good as how you use the data. Data can be a powerful tool. It is important to remember not to just capture data but to use it. Over the past week you can see articles on clinical documentation integrity (CDI) impacting patient care. The question is how do […]
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 CY23 End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) Prospective Payment System Proposed Rule would increase Medicare reimbursement rates, among other policy changes. CMS recently proposed the Calendar Year 2023 End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) Prospective Payment System (PPS) Proposed Rule, which would boost Medicare reimbursement for ESRD facilities and refine a new mandatory value-based purchasing program. The proposed […]
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 […]
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has begun covering a portion of the device cost for Barostim Neo, a neuromodulation device for treating chronic heart failure. In late 2020, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that it would begin covering a substantial portion of the cost of implantable heart failure […]
The number of beneficiaries in traditional Medicare using telehealth exploded 63-fold in 2020 from 840,000 in 2019 to nearly 52.7 million, a new study found. The study, released Friday (PDF) by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), comes as advocates are pressing to make key flexibilities the federal government enabled at the start […]
CMS has been incrementally expanding coverage for remote patient monitoring since first recognizing the platform in 2019. Through RPM, healthcare providers can use digital health tools and telehealth platforms to improve care management for patients at home, especially those with chronic conditions or who’ve been recently discharged from a hospital. The platform has the […]










