Pennsylvania safety-net hospitals Archives - Page 12 of 20 - Safety-Net Association of Pennsylvania

340B Program Faces Challenges, Change

A federal program that helps selected health care providers obtain discounted drugs for low-income patients they are serving on an outpatient basis may soon face major changes.
The 340B prescription drug pricing program, created more than 20 years ago to help serve low-income individuals, has come under fire in recent years in both the House and the Senate over how qualified, participating providers – disproportionate share hospitals, Federally Qualified Health Centers and their look-alikes, children’s hospitals, critical access hospitals, rural referral centers, and others – use the savings they derive from the program. While there is a general expectation that providers will use those savings to provide additional services to low-income patients, they are required neither to do that nor to discloses how they do use their savings.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing about the program last week and Congress has asked the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) to look into the program as well.
In addition, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently published an update on the status of its 2011 recommendations for improving the program, which it found suffered from inadequate oversight by Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), lacked adequate criteria for determining patient and provider eligibility, and lacked controls for preventing drugs acquired through the program from being diverted to ineligible patients.
The administration has long been thought to be preparing new guidelines for the 340B program.
Most Pennsylvania safety-net hospitals qualify for the 340B program because of the many low-income patients they serve, so any changes in the program will be of special interest to them.
For a closer look at the issues surrounding the 340B program, see this Roll Call blog report. Find a summary of the GAO report Drug Discount Program: Status of GAO Recommendations to Improve 340B Drug Pricing Program Oversight and a link to the study itself here and a report on some of the testimony provided at the congressional hearing here.

PA Safety Net Admin2015-03-30T06:00:39+00:00March 30th, 2015|Pennsylvania safety-net hospitals|Comments Off

Numbers Link Medicaid Expansion, Diabetes Diagnoses

One of the primary arguments made by the Safety-Net Association of Pennsylvania in favor of state Medicaid reimbursement policies that support the work of safety-net hospitals is that many of the low-income patients they serve have had sporadic contact with the health care system over the years and often present with medical problems that go well beyond the immediate reason that brings them to hospitals.
Now comes new information that supports that argument.
The medical testing company Quest Diagnostics has found that the number of Medicaid patients its testing has found to have diabetes has risen more than 24 percent during two recent six-month review periods in states that have expanded their Medicaid programs while the number of such patients found to have diabetes in states that did not expand their Medicaid programs saw only a 0.4 percent increase in diabetes diagnoses.
Pennsylvania did not expand access to Medicaid during the review periods covered by the Quest analysis but now that it has done so, the problem seems likely to arise in the state.
Because of where they are located, Pennsylvania’s safety-net hospitals serve higher proportions of low-income patients than the typical community hospital and are therefore more likely to be caring for these more challenging patients newly diagnosed with diabetes in the near future.
For more information about the Quest findings and their implications, see this New York Times article. In addition, the latest edition of the journal Diabetes Care presents a study on the subject. See that article here.

PA Safety Net Admin2015-03-26T06:00:08+00:00March 26th, 2015|Pennsylvania safety-net hospitals|Comments Off

States Turning More to Providers to Fund Medicaid

States are relying more on provider taxes and other sources to raise their share of Medicaid funding, a new study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has found.
According to the GAO, state use of such funding rose 21 percent from 2008 to 2012. Most of the money came from health care provider taxes, provider donations, intergovernmental transfers, and Medicaid certified public expenditures.
While the study examined the issue nation-wide it focused on Medicaid financing in three states: California, Illinois, and New York.
Use of provider taxes is of special interest to Pennsylvania safety-net hospitals because it appears the state’s proposed FY 2016 budget may call for funding more of the state’s Medicaid program with proceeds from hospital provider taxes.
To learn more about how states are financing their share of their Medicaid programs and why this is of interest to policy-makers, see the recently re-released GAO report States’ Increased Reliance on Funds from Health Care Providers and Local Governments Warrants Improved CMS Data Collection and a newly published companion to the report titled Questionnaire Data on States’ Methods for Financing Medicaid Payments from 2008 through 2012.

PA Safety Net Admin2015-03-19T06:00:57+00:00March 19th, 2015|Pennsylvania safety-net hospitals, Proposed FY 2016 Pennsylvania state budget|Comments Off

Congress Mulls Another Medicare Doc Fix

With a March 31 deadline looming before Medicare payments to physicians are scheduled to decline more than 20 percent, it appears Congress may be considering permanent repeal of the underlying root of the problem rather than yet another short-term patch.
At the heart of the problem is the sustainable growth rate formula, or SGR, that determines how Medicare pays physicians. For years Congress has applied short-term solutions to the SGR problem and paid for those solutions with short-term spending cuts. Now it appears congressional leaders are contemplating a permanent repeal of the troublesome formula.
The cost of doing so is about $175 billion for ten years, and Congress reportedly is considering cuts in both benefits and provider payments.
Because many Pennsylvania safety-net hospitals own physician practices, this issue is very important to them.
The Wall Street Journal has taken a closer look at this matter, examining the issue, the stakes, and both the policy and the political challenges congressional negotiators now face. See its report here.

PA Safety Net Admin2015-03-17T06:00:59+00:00March 17th, 2015|Uncategorized|Comments Off

Congress to Consider Adding Risk Adjustment to Medicare Readmissions Program

A new bill introduced in Congress last week would require Medicare to consider the socio-economic status of the patients individual hospitals serve as part of its hospital readmissions reduction program.
The Establishing Beneficiary Equity in the Hospital Readmissions Program Act of 2015 was introduced as S. 688 in the Senate, sponsored by Senators Rob Portman (R-OH) and Joe Manchin (D-WV), and in the House by Representatives Jim Renacci (R-OH) and Eliot Engel (D-NY) as H.R. 1343.
Rep. Renacci introduced a similar measure last year. This year’s version has bipartisan sponsorship in both the House and Senate.
Since the launch of Medicare’s readmissions reduction program several years ago, a number of studies have suggested that the program is unfair to hospitals that serve especially large numbers of low-income patients. The new proposal seeks to address that unfairness.
Pennsylvania’s safety-net hospitals serve especially large numbers of low-income patients and have been especially vulnerable to the readmissions reduction program’s penalties.
To learn more about this proposal, see this news release announcing the bill. Find the bill itself here.

PA Safety Net Admin2015-03-16T06:00:53+00:00March 16th, 2015|Uncategorized|Comments Off

SNAP Looks to the Future

With the inauguration of a new governor and the start of a new legislative session, the Safety-Net Association of Pennsylvania (SNAP) has prepared a series of four papers for leaders of the new Wolf administration and legislative and committee leaders and staff.
The fourth of those papers, released this week, addresses the importance of innovation in addressing the challenges safety-net hospitals face in leading the way to serving Pennsylvania’s growing Medicaid population.
The paper describes the new demands being made of hospitals by insurers, government, and others; tools through which to pursue innovation; the goals of future innovation; and the role that SNAP and safety-net hospitals must play in that innovation.
The first paper, “What is SNAP?”, was an introduction to the Safety-Net Association of Pennsylvania: what safety-net hospitals are, where they are located, whom they serve, and how they differ from other acute-care hospitals in the state.
The second paper, “The Challenges Pennsylvania Safety-Net Hospitals Face,” describes the special role safety-net hospitals play in serving low-income and medically vulnerable Pennsylvanians and the emerging challenges they face in fulfilling this vital role.
The third paper, “Transitioning Medicaid: Principles for Changing Course on Medicaid Expansion,” presents eight principles SNAP believes state officials should follow if they choose to abandon the Healthy Pennsylvania model of Medicaid expansion in favor of a more traditional approach to expanding the state’s Medicaid expansion.
Find all four SNAP papers here.

PA Safety Net Admin2015-02-12T10:43:14+00:00February 12th, 2015|Pennsylvania Medicaid policy, Pennsylvania safety-net hospitals, Safety-Net Association of Pennsylvania|Comments Off

Millions Live in ACA Coverage Gap

Nearly four million people who were supposed to be helped to health insurance through the Affordable Care Act remain uninsured today because they earn too much to qualify for Medicaid and not enough to qualify for the reform law’s health insurance subsidies.
When the law was passed in 2010, it was supposed to provide Medicaid coverage for those earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level and offer subsidies to other low-income earners. But when the Supreme Court made the reform law’s mandatory Medicaid expansion optional for states and some states chose not to expand their Medicaid programs, nearly four million people found themselves wedged between eligibility for Medicaid and eligibility for subsidies, with no help forthcoming.
Among the four million, more than half work at least part-time and two-thirds reside in a household with at least one wage-earner. Most work for small companies that are not required to provide health insurance for their employees and many earn the minimum wage. Many are single adults.
The coverage gap has been a problem in Pennsylvania, which until recently did not expand its Medicaid program. As a result, many people who fell into this gap turned to the state’s safety-net hospitals when they needed care but had no health insurance.
The Washington Post has taken a look at the challenges these low-income and often medically vulnerable people face living in states that have chosen not expanded their Medicaid programs. See its report here.

PA Safety Net Admin2015-01-26T06:00:19+00:00January 26th, 2015|Affordable Care Act, Pennsylvania Medicaid policy, Pennsylvania safety-net hospitals|Comments Off

The Challenges Facing Pennsylvania’s Safety-Net Hospitals

With the arrival of a new governor and the start of a new legislative session, the Safety-Net Association of Pennsylvania (SNAP) has prepared a series of four papers for leaders of the new Wolf administration and legislative and committee leaders and staff.
The second of those four papers describes the major health care and health policy challenges safety-net hospitals face. Those challenges include:

the distinct patients safety-net hospitals serve
inadequate payments for Medicaid services
the large numbers of uninsured and underinsured patients safety-net hospitals serve
threats to vital state Medicaid supplemental payments, such as Medicaid disproportionate share payments (Medicaid DSH
continuing change and reform in the health care system, including the delivery of care and how safety-net hospitals are paid for their services

The first paper, “What is SNAP?”, was an introduction to the Safety-Net Association of Pennsylvania: what safety-net hospitals are, where they are located, whom they serve, and how they differ from other acute-care hospitals in the state.
Find both SNAP papers here.

PA Safety Net Admin2015-01-23T06:00:07+00:00January 23rd, 2015|Safety-Net Association of Pennsylvania|Comments Off

Will High Court Help Pave the Way to Higher Medicaid Payments?

In a case that could have nation-wide implications for health care providers, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear an appeal of a lower court decision that ordered the state of Idaho to raise Medicaid payments to providers serving the developmentally disabled because the state’s payments were too low.
While litigants in some states have used the courts in recent years to seek redress for what they believed were inadequate Medicaid payments, Supreme Court action on that matter could have national implications: if the court supports the state of Idaho’s appeal of the order to raise fees it could limit the use of litigation in the future as a means of increasing payments and improving access to care for the Medicaid population. If, on the other hand, the court rejects the Idaho appeal, it could potentially open the door to more such litigation, especially in states with Medicaid payments that do not even cover the cost of services providers deliver.
The outcome of this case will be of special interest to Pennsylvania’s safety-net hospitals because the state still underpays hospitals for much of the care they provide to their Medicaid patients.
To learn more about the Idaho case, similar litigation elsewhere, and the implications of the case about to go before the Supreme Court, see this Kaiser Health News report.

PA Safety Net Admin2015-01-14T06:00:35+00:00January 14th, 2015|Pennsylvania Medicaid policy, Pennsylvania safety-net hospitals|Comments Off

Unemployment Plays Major Role in Hospital Readmissions

A new study has found that employment status is the leading socioeconomic indicator of hospital readmissions for patients who have suffered heart attacks, heart failure, and pneumonia.
Using 2011 and 2012 data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, researchers examined readmissions for these conditions based on nine factors that constitute what is known as the Community Needs Index: elderly poverty, single parent poverty, child poverty, lack of health insurance, minority, no high school, renting, unemployment, and limited English. Their analysis found that only employment status and lack of high school education were statistically significant predictors of hospital readmissions for the three conditions studied, with employment status more than three times as powerful an indicator as lack of high school education.
High unemployment is typically a major problem in the communities served by Pennsylvania safety-net hospitals.
Learn more about the study in this Fierce Healthcare report and see the study itself here.

PA Safety Net Admin2014-12-19T06:00:57+00:00December 19th, 2014|Uncategorized|Comments Off

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