Both Houses of Congress have approved the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006, which eliminates the planned 5% Medicare Physician Fee Schedule cut for 2007. The bill now goes to the White House and President Bush is expected to sign it. The bill contained other key health care provisions which we intend to explain in…

Henry Butler, M.D. asks what the PA  MCARE report means in laymen’s language. Although the surchaerges are decreasing, the unfunded liability is $2.33 and rising!  Physician migration from PA  appears to have remain unchanged during the program. PA desires to end the program and encourage privitization of the excess or second layer of covergage. Worthy…

Pennsylvania allows health care facilities or health care providers to charge fees for the reproduction of medical records. Below is the exact text of the announcement in the

December 2, 2006 Pennsylvania Bulletin (Vol. 36, No. 48, pages 7345 and 7346) announcing the approved fees for 2007:

Under 42 Pa. C.S. § § 6152 and 6155…

The Pennsylvania Commission on the Medical Care Availability and Reduction of Error Fund (MCARE Fund) was created in December of 2005 for the purpose of investigating methods to reduce the unfunded liability of the MCARE Fund and the phasing out of the MCARE Program. The MCARE Program was created by Act 13 of 2002 to replace…

All health care providers covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) must begin using the standard unique identifiers for healthcare providers and health plans mandated by HIPAA no later than May 23, 2007. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services release on November 17, 2006, “every covered health care…

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued Advisory Opinion 06-22, which is another in a series of similar approving gainsharing arrangements, i.e., 01-01 and 05-01 through 05-06. Under the current proposed arrangement, a hospital would pay a cardiac surgery group 50 percent of the hospital’s first year cost savings directly attributable to specific changes in the…

In accordance with § 626 of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, which commissioned a study by the GAO to evaluate a payment system using groups of covered services under the outpatient prospective payment system, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed a new reimbursement system for Ambulatory Surgery Centers (ASC) on August 23…

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued the final rule for the 2007 Physician Schedule on November 1, 2006, which will soon be published in the Federal Register.

§      The final rule provides a 5% reduction in the 2007 Fee Schedule, which is just a slight change from the proposed 5.1% reduction…

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