Healthcare, Senior Living, Economics
rhislop3 Below is a link to an article from Bloomberg Business Week regarding the Hospice industry and the Medicare Choices Program. My last post covered the elements of this CMS demonstration project. The link comes from the original piece written by Charles Elmore and published in the Palm Beach Post this weekend. Readers will note my … Read more
About a month ago (mid-March), CMS introduced a pilot program called the Medicare Care Choices Model. Basically, this pilot program will allow Medicare beneficiaries to access, via certain participating hospice organizations, dual benefits; hospice and curative treatments, concurrently. Under the current Medicare Hospice Benefit, a patient with a terminal illness or condition, certified likely to … Read more
As a follow-up to a recent post on Boards of Directors and corporate governance (http://wp.me/ptUlY-gq), this post addresses how boards promote success, can often drive mediocrity and in some cases prompt organizational failure. The take-away where success, mediocrity and failure occur isn’t structure, terms or committees rather, a consistent excellence or break-down in terms of … Read more
Recently, a reader asked me a question regarding which states still use RUGs III for their Medicaid case-mix payments. At the time, I honestly didn’t know the answer completely. Based on a little research, I’ve outlined the RUGs status as I currently know it, across the states that utilize Medicaid case-mix. Note: Not all states use … Read more
While this isn’t a de novo trend, it is one that I am seeing again with frequency and thus, it bears/requires CAUTION. This trend is commonly referred to as Skilled until Death or End-of-Life Skilled. The reference in “skilled” is Medicare; delivering qualified skilled nursing or skilled therapy services (or combination thereof) with sufficient frequency … Read more
Yesterday, the Speaker of the House (John Boehner) announced that a compromise is forthcoming to alleviate, for one year, the pending 24% payment reduction to the Physician Fee Schedule arising out of the current SGR formula. Ten days or so ago I wrote a post regarding a House bill that repealed the SGR but contained … Read more
Over the course of many engagements plus my years as an executive, I’ve addressed and been asked to address, the theme of effective governance, particularly at the Board level. To bring this topic into full context, one of my many “hats” that I wear (periodically), is as an advisor to graduate and post-graduate students working … Read more
Earlier today, the House passed a bill that repeals the SGR formula used to derive physician reimbursement under Medicare. For more specifics on the SGR, see a previous post I wrote at http://wp.me/ptUlY-ae . The legislation is title SGR Repeal and Medicare Payment Modernization Act. Unfortunately, the fate of the legislation is predestined as the bill … Read more
Rarely do I write about a specific company as my work doesn’t focus on individual companies per se, more on industries and the policy/economics of health care industry segments. Occasionally, a company’s story typifies an industry flaw or trend or the same is illustrative of an endemic issue (Vitas for example). Amedisys’ continued saga of … Read more
Using characterizations, 2013 was a year of gradual ascent for the industry but not necessarily, uniformly so. After a series of years preceding classified as industry malaise, occupancy began to trend forward and absorption rates stabilize. Industry wide, overall occupancy is hovering around 90% for CCRCs though again, this number is broadly misleading. Non-profit CCRCs, the … Read more