Reimbursement

Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) recently introduced a bill that they say would curtail fraud, but opponents say its value is dubious.

In response to the April 7 Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) recommendation that medical practitioners who use substantially higher levels of advanced diagnostic imaging services receive Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) approval before being able to provide those services, the Imaging e-Ordering Coalition encourages Medicare officials to instead look to existing clinical decision support tools to reduce costs, increase efficiency, support appropriate use, and improve quality of care in diagnostic imaging.

Some New Jersey lawmakers have threatened to exclude Medicaid spending from 2012 state budget negotiations, if they don't get more details from Gov. Chris Christie's administration on plans to save $300 million in the program.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) on April 8 named Farzad Mostashari, MD, to replace David Blumenthal, MD as national coordinator for health information technology.

Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) introduced legislation Thursday to make doctors' Medicare claims data public for the first time. 

Healthcare providers in South Carolina will face their first payment cut in three years after Gov. Nikki Haley signed a bill repealing a 2008 proviso in state law that prevented the Department of Health and Human Services from lowering Medicaid reimbursement rates.

First, I think Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are a great idea. Just like I thought HMOs were a good idea in 1988 and I thought IPAs were a good idea in 1994.The whole notion of making providers accountable for balancing cost, medical necessity, appropriateness of care, and quality just has to be the answer.

For the first time, Medicare patients can see how often hospitals report serious conditions that develop during an inpatient hospital stay and possibly harm patients. The important new data about the safety of care available in America's hospitals was recently added to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' (CMS) Hospital Compare website.

Most physicians and healthcare administrators believe that healthcare, and particularly the "revenue cycle," are controlled entirely by managed-care companies.

Healthcare organizations are constantly making upgrades or replacing redundant technology, but what happens to these orphaned IT systems and the data on them? More importantly do companies even know what data is stored on these assets?