Healthcare, Senior Living, Economics
Information and discussion on general federal health policy and politics – including Medicare, Health Reform and all other subjects Fed.
My firm (shared with my co-founder) H2 Healthcare, LLC does a lot of legal work, primarily forensic and litigation support. My wife (and partner), Diane Hislop, RN, is likely the foremost (or certainly, top few) clinical compliance experts in the country in terms of senior living and post-acute care. This means, as a group, we … Read more
The Federal Reserve hasn’t always conducted FOMC meetings (Federal Open Market Committee). It started meeting in late 1973 or early 1974. The purpose of the meeting was to address inflation primarily, in the economy; ways to control it, ways to stabilize monetary policy, ways to create price stability. In the mid 1970s, the Fed began … Read more
Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! This morning, CMS dropped a proposed rule for a staffing mandate for SNFs. On Wednesday, I wrote about the delays (staffing mandate) and the information from a CMS contracted study completed by Abt and Associates. That post is here: https://wp.me/ptUlY-LM The consensus around the staffing mandate issue is that CMS was bogged … Read more
Happy Hump Day! Another Wednesday with news too heavy to ignore. I’ll try to return to some levity and light in future Wednesday features. For a number of years, CMS has been playing with developing a staffing level mandate. The first CMS study from 20 years ago recommended a 4.1 hours per day benchmark. Recently, … Read more
Last week, the 2024 Presidential campaign season kicked into full swing with the first candidate debate. Arguably, momentum has been building ahead of the debate, especially in Iowa, during the State Fair, where candidates roamed, gave speeches, and pressed the flesh. I was there one day and enjoyed seeing Tim Scott and few other notables, … Read more
Back in early June, I wrote a post on how Medicare/CMS was intending to audit 5 claims from every participating SNF in the country. The audits would be staggered and conducted by MACs (Medicare Audit Contractors). That post is available here: https://wp.me/ptUlY-AR As we are now three months into the audit process, details are emerging … Read more
Usually I try to add some “light and levity” to my Wednesday features as the content on this site is pretty heavy health policy and economics, regulatory in nature, etc. In my work, my usual Wednesday messages internally are “fun” – a bit of Hump Day humor or whimsy. By title of this post, readers … Read more
I like tapas from time to time, especially for a happy hour gathering. Thursday seems to always be a good day to have little bites of something prior to a big weekend; even better if Friday is a short day or a day off into the weekend. In a post earlier this week I mentioned … Read more
For early August, this is a semi-busy week with health policy stuff and upcoming econ data on inflation. Congress is on recess but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a fair amount of activity in-play that will impact the health care industry, some positive, some negative. Likewise, this is the start of the presidential election … Read more
SNFs got a little early Christmas present yesterday when CMS announced its Final Rule (PPS) for Fiscal Year 2024 (begins October 1, 2023). Instead of a 3.7% increase as proposed in the initial rule, CMS finalized a 4% increase (plus an additional 0.3%). Back in April, I wrote about the proposed rule. That post is … Read more