CMS has announced its concern regarding the level of compliance for documenting the face-to-face elements necessary for home health care certification.
Attached is an educational piece published by Novitas Solutions on its Part B website.
It lists the qualification criteria for home health benefits:
…
Highmark Launches Accountable Care Alliance
Attached is the press release;
https://www.highmark.com/hmk2/newsroom/pressreleases/2013/pr071813.shtml
More to come when the details are evaluaited.
CMS has issued the poroposed Medicare Physician Fee Schedule. Without Congressional intervention, the SGR will mandate a 24.4% decrease. CMS sent its calcuations to the Medare Payment Advisory Commission.
CMS has also issued a Fact Sheet Summary:
Additional Time to Establish Protocols for Newly Required Face-to-Face Encounters for DME
Due to concerns that some providers and suppliers may need additional time to establish operational protocols necessary to comply with face-to-face encounter requirements mandated by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) for certain items of Durable Medical Equipment (DME), CMS will start actively enforcing…
The Society of General Internal Medicine convened the National Commission on Payment Reform to formulate a recommendation for healthcare payment reform. This Commission released its Report in March 2013. Although we have attached the report, here are the 12 fundamental recommendations.
1. Over time, payers should largely eliminate stand-alone fee-for-service payment to medical practices because of …
The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 includes the Physician Update Fix, which essentially provides a 0% Medicare change for 2013. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is currently revising the 2013 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (MPFS) to reflect the new law’s requirements as well as technical corrections identified since publication of the final…
OIG Advisory Opinion No. 12-15 has approved an existing arrangement under which a hospital pays physicians a per diem fee for providing on call ER coverage.
Under the arrangement, the hospital pays per diem fees to 130 specialty physicians on staff who provide on-call services, including:
· telephone consultations;
· in-person consultations, as…
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) finalized the Medicare physician fee schedule for 2013. Unless Congress intervenes, the rule implements a 26.5 percent reduction in Medicare physician payments in 2013 based on the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula. MGMA will continue its steadfast advocacy efforts to repeal the flawed SGR formula, and…
CMS issued the proposed 2013 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule on July 30, 2012. The complete document package of approximately 700 pages is available on both the CMS website and at www.medlawblog.com. For this article, I will not summarize all 700 pages, but I would like to hit three of the most significant issues:
1. 27%…
I thought you might be interested in linking to or writing about a recent blog post by Christine Zambricki, a top official with the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists. The post originally appeared in ADVANCE for Nurses
Protecting Access to CRNAs Relieves Patient Pain
By Christine Zambricki, CRNA, MA, FAAN
In less than two weeks…
