Hospitals have had a difficult year, with charity care and bad debt increasing, investments losing value, Medicaid cuts and all the uncertainty over healthcare reform.
Critical Access Hospitals, or CAHs, have it especially difficult, as they generally have fewer resources to draw upon in their communities.
With the concerns of CAHs in mind, the Healthcare Financial Management Association has scheduled education sessions at ANI 2009 that are directed at this particular subcategory of hospital.
John Sheehan, a partner at the St. Louis-based accounting and consulting firm BKD, is leading an ANI session titled "Medicare Update and Hot Topics for Critical Access Hospitals." Sheehan says this education session will address enforcement and regulatory matters directly impacting CAH payments.
"Most of the recent legislation and proposed regulations contain provisions affecting CAHs much differently than PPS hospitals," Sheehan said. "I'm going to highlight those differences and explain the impacts on CAHs, especially the stimulus bill funding formula for CAH electronic health record adoption, as well as regulations specific to CAHs."
The ideal attendee for this session would be a financial executive from a small and/or rural hospital, Sheehan said, who has a working knowledge of Medicare reimbursement.
Sheehan intends to provide CAH executives with strategies that can be implemented immediately to obtain additional reimbursement and to improve compliance. He also said the session will address long-term strategies for success as a Critical Access Hospital.