Bundled Payments: Final Hip and Knee Rule

On November 16, CMS issued the final rule for bundled payment demonstration, lower extremity, effective April 1, 2016.  A single payment, made to a qualifying hospital in one of 67 regions/MSAs covers all aspects of the hospital care, the surgery, and any post-discharge, post-acute stay components through 90 days (from initial hospitalization). The payment exclusions … Read more

Modern Health Care Risk Management

The second most important function an executive and/or a governance board conducts (second only to planning) is risk management.  This key leadership function is evolving rapidly primarily due to the evolutionary movement around compliance (ACA, CMS, etc.) and the payer focal shift from episodic, procedural care to outcome or evidenced based care, pay-for-performance, etc.  Similarly, as government policy … Read more

CMS Releases Proposed New SNF Rule

Concurrent with the White House Conference on Aging, CMS released its “proposed” rules of reform for the SNF Conditions of Participation.  The proposed rule is set for publication tomorrow in the Federal Register but readers with interest can access the document/PDF on this site on the “Reports and Other Documents” page.  The Federal Conditions of Participation … Read more

SNFs: A New Era in Post-Acute Care Begins

Over the years I have written about the changing landscape in post-acute care, principally due to the health policy ground swell resultant from the ACA (other reasons too but the ACA concretized them all, more or less). Boiled down, the fundamental driver of change is “pay for performance”; the notion that payment will migrate toward value … Read more

Hospice: Risk/Reward for Institutional Growth

With the hospice market (in most areas) fairly well saturated and the core (source) demand from traditional referral sources “flat”, growing census is a challenge for agencies. Some agencies have experienced referral growth but alas, length of stay has shortened. Others have experienced erosion as, while improper, the “skilled to death phenomenon” erodes days and … Read more

Post-Acute Compliance 2015: OIG Targets

As is customary in late fall, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Health and Human Services released its Fiscal Year work plan.  As a reminder or preface, the work plan is the summary of investigations and focal areas the OIG plans to undertake in the upcoming fiscal year and beyond … Read more

The Demographic Realities of Seniors Housing and Healthcare

As regular readers know, I speak at a number of conferences annually.  Additionally, I work with financiers and investors in the space literally daily.  In all my journeys and conversations, I am still faced with some major myth “debunking” about the nature of the seniors housing and healthcare demand, current.  The major myth: Baby-boomers are either … Read more

Therapy, Medicare Fraud, Extendicare: Lessons for SNFs

In mid-October,  the Justice Department announced a $38 million settlement with the SNF chain Extendicare, resolving a series of Medicare False Claims Act violations. The violations involved improper billing for services supposedly provided, provided unnecessarily, or for care that was substandard.  This series of violations included allegations of inappropriately billed therapy services; care billed for … Read more

SNFs: Five Competitive Strategies Worthy of Investment

One of the top questions I’m asked by clients, readers, students, and interested parties everywhere is how can my organization excel in a competitive environment.  In other words, how can I build my organization’s value proposition such that the organization becomes the provider of choice in the market?  My answer is always thematically the same: … Read more

CCRC Update 2014

Earlier this spring (a couple, three moths ago), I spoke at a marketing/P.R. conference and when my session was over, I sat and visited with a number of the attendees.  My presentation was about value propositions and marketing; how to align your organization’s core economic value components within a marketplace, within a customer segment.  Within … Read more