News
Critics of a pilot program designed to lower the cost of medical equipment purchased by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently received support for their concerns in a new report released by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). But while the models used by researchers confirmed earlier outside assessments of the program, the director of the program says the researchers got it wrong.
An analysis of hospices active in Medicare between 1999 and 2009 published in the June issue of Health Affairs is an attempt to shed some light on the degree of the changes transforming the industry and to point the industry in the direction it should be focusing on.
The home care industry has enormous potential for business people. One segment of the business world has already figured this out: franchise business owners
Over the last seven months, St. Joseph Health System (SJHS), a large Catholic healthcare organization located across California and western Texas, has been using a multi-disciplinary approach to engage its physicians and clinicians in understanding the impact of clinical practice patterns and resource variability.
When it comes to healthcare and patient collections processes, good communication is key, said Sunni Patterson, president and CEO of RMK Holdings, a healthcare collections company in Chicago. However, she believes that for a large number of hospitals and healthcare systems across the country, communication between healthcare providers, payers and patients is the missing piece.
Chief financial officer John Cornell at Meadows Regional Medical Center, a 64-bed rural hospital in Vidalia, Ga., spoke recently with Healthcare Finance News Associate Editor Kelsey Brimmer regarding some of the most prominent financial issues that rural hospitals face in the future and have been facing in the last few years.
Over the past few years and as we move into the future, many rural and critical access hospitals throughout the country have continued to struggle when it comes to rising costs of care and decreased reimbursements, as well as the recruitment and retention of high-quality clinicians and staff, among other challenges.
Ardis Dee Hoven, MD
President-elect, American Medical Association
Medical director, Bluegrass Care Clinic
Lexington, Ky.
Fraud remains a stubborn and growing problem for the U.S. healthcare industry, raising costs for patients and cutting sharply into margins for insurance payers. Of the more than $2.5 trillion spent on healthcare in the United States annually, some $60 billion to $250 billion is lost to fraud, waste and abuse, according to industry experts. Organized crime groups and a small minority of healthcare providers commit most healthcare fraud, reports the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association.
As the acquisition of physician practices has once again become a hot topic, hospitals may be considering payment for certain intangible assets. For regulatory purposes, these transactions must remain consistent with the fair market value (FMV) standard under the Stark Law and Anti-Kickback Statute.