Medicare & Medicaid

Iowa's governor, Republican Terry Branstad, is moving full speed ahead with a plan to put private companies in charge of managing Medicaid's services.

Medicaid paid $7.4 million to 94 providers for services performed by providers that had been barred for reasons such as fraud, waste or quality.

The overwhelming majority of patients were not homebound and did not need home health services, according to authorities.

The worst-offending hospitals will see their Medicare reimbursements slashed by as much as 3 percent, though many on the list will be penalized less than 1 percent.

Last December, a 37-year-old patient with dissociative disorder died after hanging herself with a bedsheet and closet doorknob, a suicide that could have been prevented if Timberlawn used best practices.

Since the fines began, national readmission rates have dropped, but roughly one of every five Medicare patients sent to the hospital ends up returning within a month.

While hospitals in Maryland have not brought down the state's total costs of care, the all-payer system seems promising enough to state and federal leaders under universal healthcare coverage.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will lift the rate it pays inpatient hospitals in 2016 by 0.9 percent, the agency announced Friday, as long as facilities participate in the Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting Program and demonstrate meaningful use through the use of electronic health records.

From 2010 to 2013, Paula Kluding concealed the true medical condition of Prairie View Hospice's patients in order to "pass" a Medicare audit and to fraudulently obtain money from Medicare, according to evidence presented at trial.

In addition to the payment change, CMS said it will begin penalizing skilled nursing facilities in 2018 that fail to report quality measures as part of the agency's shift towards value-based reimbursement.