PA Safety Net Admin, Author at Safety-Net Association of Pennsylvania

ACA Slowly, Surely Improving Health Status

A new survey has found that the combination of Affordable Care Act-driven enhanced access to health insurance and improved performance by health care providers is producing better health status in communities across the U.S.
The survey looked at health status in 306 regional health care markets based on factors such as access to care, quality, avoidable hospital use, health care costs, and health outcomes found modest improvements in these areas and attributed those improvements to expanded access to health insurance and government quality programs introduced through the Affordable Care Act. The gains the survey documented occurred from 2011 through 2014.
To learn more about how the survey was administered and what it found and to see and compare health status in individual communities, go here to read the Commonwealth Fund report Scorecard on Local Health System Performance.

PA Safety Net Admin2016-07-21T06:00:22+00:00July 21st, 2016|Affordable Care Act|Comments Off

Report to CMS on Risk Adjustment of Medicare Payments

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has issued its latest report to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on how to adjust Medicare payments to hospitals based on the socio-economic risk factors hospitals’ patients pose.
At the request of CMS, the Academies created an expert committee to

…identify criteria for selecting social risk factors, specific social risk fascinators Medicare could use, and methods of accounting for those factors in Medicare quality measurement and payment applications.

The committee created for this purpose viewed its goal to be

…to guide the selection of social risk factors that could be accounted for in VBP [value-based purchasing] so that providers or health plans are rewarded for delivering quality care and value, independent of whether they serve patients with relatively low or high levels of social risk factors.

Now, the committee has issued its third report to CMS, and in that report it offers three overarching considerations and five criteria to determine “whether a social risk factor should be accounted for in performance indicators used in Medicare VBP programs.” They are:

The social risk factor is related to the outcome.

The social risk factor has a conceptual relationship with the outcome of interest.
The social risk factor has an empirical association with the outcome of interest.

The social risk factor precedes care quality and is not a consequence of the quality of care.

The social risk factor is present at the start of care.
The social risk factor is not modifiable through provider actions.

The social risk factor is not something the provider can manipulate.

The social risk factor is resistant to manipulation or gaming.

Medicare’s readmissions reduction program and other value-based purchasing programs create special challenges for providers like Pennsylvania’s safety-net hospitals that serve especially large numbers of low-income patients.
To learn more about what the committee proposed and why it proposed it, see this news release describing its work, this summary of its work, and the full report, titled Accounting for Social Risk Factors in Medicare Payment Criteria, Factors, and Methods.

PA Safety Net Admin2016-07-20T06:00:58+00:00July 20th, 2016|Medicare, Pennsylvania safety-net hospitals, Uncategorized|Comments Off

PA Pursues New Approach to Opioid Addiction Treatment

Pennsylvania has secured federal funding to underwrite the creation of 20 centers of excellence to help people overcome opioid-related substance abuse problems.
According to a Department of Human Services news release,

The COEs [centers of excellence] coordinate care for people with Medicaid. Rather than just treating the addiction, DHS will treat the entire person through team-based treatment, with the explicit goal of integrating behavioral health and primary care and, when necessary, evidence-based medication assisted treatment.

Prescription Medication Spilling From an Open Medicine Bottle The 20 centers of excellence, which will be licensed by the state’s Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs, are expected to be open by October 1.
To learn more about the state’s new approach to serving those with opioid abuse problems and to find a list of the 20 centers of excellence, see this Department of Human Services news release.

PA Safety Net Admin2016-07-19T06:00:36+00:00July 19th, 2016|Pennsylvania Medicaid policy|Comments Off

New PA Budget Boosts PA Safety-Net Hospitals

Pennsylvania’s recently adopted FY 2017 budget restores to safety-net hospitals selected supplemental Medicaid payments that were not included in the budget Governor Tom Wolf originally proposed in February.
Financial paperwork The state’s FY 2017 budget restores, to FY 2016 levels, Medicaid OB/NICU, burn center, trauma center, and critical access hospital payments. All had been targeted for reduction or elimination in the governor’s budget proposal.
The new budget includes modest increases for the Medicaid fee-for-service program, for managed care spending, and for physician practice plans. It also designates an additional $3.75 million for academic medical centers.
The human services code revisions needed to direct the Department of Human Services to make these Medicaid payments also have been adopted.

PA Safety Net Admin2016-07-18T06:00:27+00:00July 18th, 2016|Pennsylvania proposed FY 2017 budget|Comments Off

Medicaid Directors Seek Help With Hepatitis C Drugs

The combination of new cures for hepatitis C, the high cost of those cures, and the large population of low-income people suffering from the disease has the nation’s Medicaid directors asking for help from Congress.
“Medicaid programs have decades of experience providing care to medically complex patients, but Hepatitis C is the first real case where a very high per patient cost has been combined with a very large patient population needing treatment,” the National Association of Medicaid Directors declared in a recent news release.
To help them address the high cost of providing a new generation of drugs to the estimated one million Medicaid recipients with hepatitis C, Medicaid directors have asked Congress to introduce policies that reduce the prices of those drugs or give states bigger rebates for purchasing them, noting that states have neither “…the financial capacity to cover the full cost of these treatments” nor “…the clear statutory authority to effectively and efficiently administer the program.”
Pennsylvania is in the midst of examining its policies regarding authorizing the use of expensive drugs to treat Medicaid patients with hepatitis C and is expected to make those drugs more widely available in the near future.
Learn more about the challenges state Medicaid programs face when serving beneficiaries with hepatitis C and the help they seek from Congress in this news release from the National Association of Medicaid Directors.

PA Safety Net Admin2016-07-12T06:00:12+00:00July 12th, 2016|Pennsylvania Medicaid policy, Uncategorized|Comments Off

CMS Proposes 2017 Medicare Outpatient Payment Policies

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has revealed how it proposes paying hospitals for Medicare-covered outpatient services in 2017.
Bookshelf with law books Among other matters, the 764-page proposed regulation addresses:

proposed rate increases for outpatient and ambulatory surgery center services;
new site-neutral outpatient payment policies;
changes in the value-based purchasing program;
changes in hospital outpatient quality reporting requirements;
electronic health record policies; and
changes in ambulatory surgical center quality reporting requirements.

Interested parties have until September 6 to submit written comments to CMS. The final rule will be published later this year and take effect on January 1, 2017. To learn more about what CMS has proposed for Medicare outpatient payments go here to see a CMS fact sheet and here to see the proposed regulation itself.

PA Safety Net Admin2016-07-08T06:00:26+00:00July 8th, 2016|Medicare|Comments Off

New Approach to Super-Utilizers: Free Housing

A Chicago hospital is experimenting with a new way of serving its most frequent uninsured ER visitors: arranging for free housing.
The University of Illinois Hospital has found that many of its most frequent ER patients, while suffering from numerous and chronic medical problems, turn to its ER for overnight accommodations during harsh weather. Under a pilot program, the hospital is spending $1000 a month to put its homeless super-utilizers into free housing.
With overnight hospital stays for uninsured patients costing $3000, the program offers the potential for significant savings for the hospital. In addition to free housing, participating patients are assigned a case manager to help coordinate their health care needs.
Such patients can be found outside of places like Chicago that have occasionally harsh weather, and so-called super-utilizers frequent hospitals because of medical problems, not just harsh weather. In fact, about half of overall Medicaid spending is for just five percent of the program’s 55 million participants. Pennsylvania’s safety-net hospitals serve significant numbers of such patients.
Learn more about how the University of Illinois Hospital is attempting to meet the needs of its uninsured super-utilizers in this report from National Public Radio.

PA Safety Net Admin2016-07-06T06:00:42+00:00July 6th, 2016|Pennsylvania safety-net hospitals|Comments Off

Pennsylvania Health Law Project Newsletter

The Pennsylvania Health Law Project has published its June 2016 newsletter.
phlp Included in this edition are stories about the delay in implementation of the state’s Community HealthChoices program of managed long-term services and supports for the dually eligible; challenges for those seeking home and community-based services from state waiver programs; and more.
Find the newsletter here.

PA Safety Net Admin2016-06-30T06:00:21+00:00June 30th, 2016|Pennsylvania Medicaid, Pennsylvania Medicaid laws and regulations, Pennsylvania Medicaid policy|Comments Off

CMS Proposes Changes in Terms of Medicare, Medicaid Provider Participation

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has proposed changes in the terms under which hospitals may participate in Medicare and Medicaid.
Among those changes, hospitals must:

establish an infection prevention and control program with qualified leaders
establish an antibiotic stewardship program with qualified leaders
establish policies prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin, general, sexual orientation, age, and disability
incorporate readmission and hospital-acquired conditions information into their Quality Assessment and Performance Improvement program
improve their medical record-keeping and provide for patient access to those records

Learn more what CMS has proposed and why it has proposed it in this CMS news release and this CMS fact sheet. CMS is accepting comments about the proposed changes until August 15. Find a link to the proposed rule itself here.

PA Safety Net Admin2016-06-28T06:00:07+00:00June 28th, 2016|Medicare|Comments Off

MACPAC Submits Annual Report to Congress

The non-partisan agency that advises Congress on Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program issues has submitted its annual report to Congress.
In that report, the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission offers an overview of historical federal spending on Medicaid, noting that Medicaid spending per beneficiary is growing slower than health care spending covered by Medicare and private insurance.
The MACPAC report also examines different approaches to Medicaid financing, including block grants, capped allotments, per capita limits, and more, reviewing the impact changes in Medicaid financing could have on care, state financing, providers, and state decision-making authority.
macpac In addition, MACPAC looks at the more than 100 different tools used at the state level to assess the functional capabilities of individuals who may be eligible for Medicaid-funded long-term services and supports.
For a closer look at what MACPAC had to say about these and other Medicaid- and CHIP-related issues, go here for a news release accompanying its annual report and a link to that report.

PA Safety Net Admin2016-06-24T06:00:11+00:00June 24th, 2016|Uncategorized|Comments Off

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