CMS issued a proposed rule revising discharge-planning requirements in late October, estimating that the changes would cost $22,000 per hospital annually and $6,400 for critical access hospitals. The American Hospital Association, the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) and others have challenged the cost estimates, claiming the revisions will cost nearly 10 times as much as […]
Cyber risk figures into the credit rating for many companies and organizations, said Moody’s Investors Service analysts in a recent cross sector global report. Assessing cyber preparedness for credit rating purposes “is challenging because the risk is complex and evolving very quickly.” Moody’s considers the risk of a widespread, material cyber event similar to how […]
Note: the editorial staff at iProtean will be taking a holiday break beginning next week and will return the first week in January. Happy Holidays! The not-for-profit healthcare sector will be “stable” in 2016, according to the Moody’s Investor Service 2016 Outlook, released early this month. Moody’s analysts attribute stability to operating cash flow […]
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) issued preliminary estimates for hospital-acquired conditions (HACs) for 2014, noting a 17 percent decline since 2010. This translates to a cumulative total of 2.1 million fewer HACs for hospital patients from 2011 through 2014. AHRQ estimated that nearly 87,000 fewer patients died in the hospital as […]
Medicare issued the final rule for its first mandatory bundled payment program, Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement (CJR). Participation in this model will be mandatory for 791 hospitals in 67 geographic regions. It will begin April 1, 2016. These hospitals will be accountable for the quality and cost of care provided to Medicare fee-for-service […]
Board members overseeing risk management and compliance can now view the chief healthcare regulatory agency’s 2016 Work Plan, a blueprint of projected investigations over the coming year. The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued its work plan in early November and noted that it “will expand its focus […]
Both policy makers and providers expected a movement of patients from inpatient to outpatient settings due to payment redesign and other cost-cutting initiatives in the years since the Affordable Care Act was signed into law. However, both inpatient and outpatient utilization fell among pre-Medicare-age enrollees in employer-sponsored plans in 2014, according to a new report […]
The most noteworthy of the healthcare provisions in the budget approved by Congress last week would bar acquired physician practices from billing Medicare at hospital outpatient rates. Congress worked with the White House to pass a two-year bipartisan budget agreement last week; several issues must be resolved before it is signed into law, but […]
Hospital-physician practice integration has been shown to increase outpatient prices in some metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) according to a national analysis of the effect of such deals over several years. The results were published in JAMA Internal Medicine in mid October. The study comprised practices in 240 MSAs with seven million enrollees in preferred […]
Local governments want not-for-profit hospitals to provide financial support to help them meet their rapidly increasing fixed costs. Reluctant to increase tax rates, municipalities want not-for-profit hospitals to make payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs) or, in some cases, to pay property taxes, according to a recent Sector-in-Depth report from Moody’s Investors Service. The […]