Pennsylvania safety-net hospitals Archives - Page 13 of 20 - Safety-Net Association of Pennsylvania

PA Medicaid Primary Care Fees to Plummet

Payments to Pennsylvania primary care physicians who serve Medicaid patients will fall 52.4 percent after the first of the year, when the Affordable Care Act’s two-year increase in those payments ends.
The temporary fee increase was included in the Affordable Care Act to encourage more primary care physicians to serve Medicaid patients in anticipation of the significant growth of Medicaid as a result of the reform law’s Medicaid expansion. Under that law, Medicaid primary care fees were raised to the level of Medicare primary care rates for two years. Nation-wide, the average Medicaid primary care fee will fall 42.8 percent.
So far, 15 states plan to use their own money to prevent the dramatic reduction of Medicaid primary care payments. Pennsylvania is not among them.
The cut will be especially damaging to the state’s safety-net hospitals because they serve so many more Medicaid patients than the typical hospital and expect to serve even more such patients when the state’s Medicaid program expands beginning on January 1.
Learn more about the upcoming Medicaid payment cut in the new Urban Institute report Reversing the Medicaid Fee Bump: How Much Could Medicaid Physician Fees for Primary Care Fall in 2015?, which you can find here, on the Urban Institute’s web site.

PA Safety Net Admin2014-12-17T06:00:15+00:00December 17th, 2014|Affordable Care Act, Healthy PA, Pennsylvania Medicaid policy, Pennsylvania safety-net hospitals|Comments Off

Access to Primary Care a Medicaid Problem, HHS OIG Says

Many of the primary care providers that participate in Medicaid managed care programs are inaccessible to those plans’ members, according to a new report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General (OIG).
As states’ Medicaid rolls grow and they direct more of their Medicaid beneficiaries into managed care plans, those beneficiaries may be encountering difficulty converting their access to health insurance into access to health care.
According to the OIG report Access to Care: Provider Availability in Medicaid Managed Care,

We found that slightly more than half of providers could not offer appointments to enrollees. Notably, 35 percent could not be found at the location listed by the plan, and another 8 percent were at the location but said that they were not participating in the plan. An additional 8 percent were not accepting new patients. Among the providers who offered appointments, the median wait time was 2 weeks. However, over a quarter had wait times of more than 1 month, and 10 percent had wait times longer than 2 months. Finally, primary care providers were less likely to offer an appointment than specialists; however, specialists tended to have longer wait times.

In response to these problems, the OIG recommended that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) work with states to

… (1) assess the number of providers offering appointments and improve the accuracy of plan information, (2) ensure that plans’ networks are adequate and meet the needs of their Medicaid managed care enrollees, and (3) ensure that plans are complying with existing State standards and assess whether additional standards are needed.

Pennsylvania’s safety-net hospitals will need to monitor this situation closely in the coming months as the state’s Medicaid expansion begins, bringing as many as 600,000 new beneficiaries into the program.
See the complete OIG report here.

PA Safety Net Admin2014-12-15T06:00:51+00:00December 15th, 2014|Healthy PA, Pennsylvania Medicaid policy, Pennsylvania safety-net hospitals|Comments Off

Residents of Disadvantaged Neighborhoods More Likely to Require Readmission

Medicare beneficiaries living in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods are more likely than others to require readmission to the hospital for problems associated with congestive heart failure, pneumonia, or myocardial infarction.
This is one of the findings in a new Annals of Internal Medicine study titled “Neighborhood Socioeconomic Disadvantage and 30-Day Rehospitalization: A Retrospective Cohort Study.”
The study, based on data from 2004 through 2009, compared Medicare readmission rates in different geographic areas using what is called a validated area deprivation index that measures relative socioeconomic disadvantage to identify the most disadvantaged areas. Researchers concluded that

The 30-day rehospitalization rate did not vary significantly across the least disadvantaged 85% of neighborhoods, which had an average rehospitalization rate of 21%. However, within the most disadvantaged 15% of neighborhoods, rehospitalization rates increased from 22% to 27% with worsening ADI.

These findings document the special challenges Pennsylvania’s private safety-net hospitals face in serving some of the most disadvantaged communities in the state.
Find the study here, on the web site of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

PA Safety Net Admin2014-12-12T06:00:34+00:00December 12th, 2014|Uncategorized|Comments Off

Hospitals Worry About Underpayments as Medicaid Expands in PA

The Healthy Pennsylvania Medicaid expansion will bring Medicaid payments that often fall below hospital costs, potentially causing problems for hospitals that serve especially large numbers of new Medicaid beneficiaries.
While hospitals acknowledge that in some cases they will, under the program, start receiving payments for care they otherwise might have provided without any reimbursement at all, they note that the payments they expect from Healthy PA private insurers will fail to cover the cost of the care they provide in many cases.
The problem is especially acute when it comes to payment for outpatient services, which may cover only about 30 percent of the cost of outpatient care.
Because they serve so many Medicaid patients, this situation is likely to pose an especially great challenge for Pennsylvania’s safety-net hospitals.
For a look at the challenges hospitals expect under the Healthy PA Medicaid expansion and the effect it may have on their bottom line, see this Pittsburgh Tribune-Review story.

PA Safety Net Admin2014-12-11T06:00:55+00:00December 11th, 2014|Healthy PA, Pennsylvania Medicaid policy|Comments Off

Homelessness and Safety-Net Hospitals

Homeless people with serious medical problems are more likely than others to be readmitted to hospitals – and especially, to safety-net hospitals – during their convalescence from illnesses and injuries.
This is one of the conclusions in the recently published Journal of Community Health Nursing article “Assessing the Needs for a Medical Respite: Perceptions of Service Providers and Homeless Persons.”
According the study, homeless people lack safe places to convalesce. Shelters do not suffice, the study found, because they are not open around the clock and lack staff qualified to support recovery. The homeless also report that their drugs are often stolen in shelters and they are vulnerable to infections while staying in them.
As a result, many of these patients end up being readmitted to the safety-net hospitals that originally treated them – often, for extended periods of time. Among others, this poses a real challenge for Pennsylvania safety-net hospitals because they serve so many more homeless patients than the typical hospital.
In more than 70 cities across the country, respite care facilities have been established to serve the homeless recovering from serious injuries and illnesses.
Learn more about the challenges facing homeless patients and the role safety-net hospitals play in addressing those challenges in this Dallas Morning News story and find the Journal of Community Health Nursing article here.

PA Safety Net Admin2014-12-09T06:00:10+00:00December 9th, 2014|Uncategorized|Comments Off

Feds Release Medicaid DSH “Uninsured” Definition

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has published a new regulation that defines “uninsured” for the purpose of calculating the limit for how much individual hospitals may receive in Medicaid disproportionate share hospital payments (Medicaid DSH).
Under federal law, Medicaid DSH payments to hospitals cannot exceed the uncompensated costs of the services those hospitals provide to Medicaid recipients and the uninsured. In calculating hospital-specific limits, according to the new regulation,

… the calculation of uncompensated care for purposes of the hospital-specific DSH limit will include the cost of each service furnished to an individual by that hospital for which the individual had no health insurance or other source of third party coverage.

This regulation is important to Pennsylvania safety-net hospitals because they receive Medicaid DSH payments and serve more uninsured patients than the typical hospital.
Find the complete regulation here, in the Federal Register.

PA Safety Net Admin2014-12-08T06:00:42+00:00December 8th, 2014|Uncategorized|Comments Off

Administration Delays Major 340B Program Regulation

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has decided against releasing a long-awaited regulation that was expected to bring sweeping changes to the federal government’s 340B Drug Pricing Program.
The 340B program requires drug manufacturers to sell drugs at a discount to hospitals and other providers that serve especially large proportions of low-income patients. While providers believe the program enables them to serve more vulnerable patients at a reasonable cost, drug companies have argued that the federal government has expanded the program to include more providers and more drugs than the program originally envisioned.
A spokesman for the federal Health Resources and Services administration told Bloomberg BNA that the release has been delayed until next year and that the agency

…plans to issue a proposed guidance for notice and comment that will address key policy issues raised by various stakeholders committed to the integrity of the 340B program. HRSA is also planning to issue proposed regulations where the statute provides explicit rulemaking authority, pertaining to civil monetary penalties for manufacturers, calculation of the 340B ceiling price, and administrative dispute resolution.

Because they serve so many low-income patients and typically participate in the 340B program, Pennsylvania’s private safety-net hospitals have a great deal of interest in any attempt by the federal government to alter the scope or regulation of the program.

To learn more about the delay in the anticipated 340B regulation, see this Bloomberg BNA article.

PA Safety Net Admin2014-11-24T06:00:26+00:00November 24th, 2014|Uncategorized|Comments Off

No-Hospitalization Group Plans To Be Banned

Companies will no longer be able to provide their employees with group health insurance plans that do not cover inpatient hospitalization.
This news came in a recent notice published by the Internal Revenue Service.
Recently, many large employers with lower-wage workers were purchasing low-cost health insurance that does not cover hospitalization. The IRS, however, has ruled that such plans do not meet the Affordable Care Act’s minimum value threshold. Companies were only able to purchase such plans because they are not required meet the reform law’s essential health benefits package requirement, which applies only to plans offered to individuals on health insurance exchanges.
The no-hospitalization policies were likely to leave many lower-income workers without the coverage they needed – and with large medical bills. They also were likely to leave hospitals with unexpected uncompensated care. This could have proven especially challenging for Pennsylvania safety-net hospitals because they serve larger numbers of lower-income workers than the typical hospital.
The administration is permitting employers that committed to such plans by November 4 to use them for one year and is offering affected workers access to premium subsidies that some of those workers did not otherwise have if they choose to purchase insurance on an exchange instead.
The IRS will issue regulations formalizing this policy next year.
To learn more about this issue and its implications for large businesses, low-wage workers, and hospitals, see this Kaiser Health News report. Go here to see the IRS notice.

PA Safety Net Admin2014-11-11T06:00:31+00:00November 11th, 2014|Affordable Care Act|Comments Off

Medicaid Directors Weigh in On Managed Care Regulation

The nation’s state Medicaid directors have offered their perspectives to the federal government on how to modernize and regulate state Medicaid managed care programs.
In a paper entitled “Medicaid Managed Care Modernization: Advancing Quality Improvement,” the National Association of Medicaid Directors urges the Centers for Medicare Services (CMS) to work with the states to develop quality reporting measures that are both useful and not overly burdensome.
The association also asks CMS to leave decisions about accrediting requirements for state Medicaid managed care programs in state hands and not to establish a national quality rating system for Medicaid managed care plans.
The regulation of Medicaid managed care plans is especially important to Pennsylvania safety-net hospitals because they care for so many Medicaid patients and managed care has become the primary means through which the state’s Medicaid program serves those patients.
Learn more about Medicaid directors’ recommendations for improving and regulating state Medicaid managed care programs in this National Association of Medicaid Directors correspondence with the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services.

PA Safety Net Admin2014-10-27T06:00:19+00:00October 27th, 2014|Pennsylvania Medicaid laws and regulations, Pennsylvania Medicaid policy|Comments Off

Teaching Hospitals Pitch More Residencies

With the country facing a physician shortage and the number of medical residencies capped by the 1997 Balanced Budget Act (because Medicare and Medicaid provide the primary funding for the residencies), teaching hospitals need an additional 4000 residency slots a year.
This was the message conveyed recently to a gathering of congressional aides co-sponsored by the Association of American Medical Colleges.
This issue is of interest to Pennsylvania’s safety-net hospitals, some of which are teaching hospitals.
Such an increase would cost $10 billion over the next ten years.
Learn more about the case for more residency slots in this Kaiser Health News article.

PA Safety Net Admin2014-10-09T06:00:10+00:00October 9th, 2014|Uncategorized|Comments Off

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