Healthcare, Senior Living, Economics
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
Early in April, CMS released the 2024 Medicare Advantage/Part D Final Rule and within, there are a number of interesting policy shifts that could benefit providers. The rule addresses a common practice that has been frankly, often abused by Med Advantage plans – prior authorizations or more commonly known as, “prior auths”. The crux is … Read more
While I was in Philadelphia speaking at LeadingAge’s annual conference, CMS released its 2019 Home Health Final Rule. As I wrote in an earlier post regarding the proposed rule, the topic of interest was/is a new payment model – PDGM. As has been the case across the post-acute industry, CMS is advancing case-mix models crafted around … Read more
Beginning yesterday, I’ve been following the news regarding CMS’ annual issuance of Final PPS rules for providers. Of greatest interest is the SNF Final Rule as it includes a completely new payment system, departing from the RUGS IV, therapy-centric system currently in-place. I’ve read through the Final Rule (all 424 mind-numbing pages) and summarized what SNFs … Read more
Yesterday I wrote a quick post regarding the news that CMS was about to issue the SNF Final Rule for Fiscal Year 2019. Today, the text is available. Official publication in the Federal Register is set for August 8th. Readers may access the text here: SNF 2019 Final Rule I will have analysis and more … Read more
Late this afternoon, I caught news that CMS will release a number of Final Rules impacting post-acute providers over the next few days. Below is a quick summary of what is known for SNFs. I will update this information as I get access to the Final Rule. PPS rates (manual) to adjust by 2.4% (increase). A … Read more
The long-awaited final rule on the revised/new SNF Conditions of Participation is set for publishing on October 4 in the Federal Register. The public inspection version is available now, including the comments from the Proposed Rule at this link: https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2016-23503.pdf The whole document is over 900 pages. The salient portions that include the regulatory changes/summary … Read more