Healthcare, Senior Living, Economics
It was only a matter of time before cases involving telehealth fraud/False Claims Act cases became public. This week, two press releases from the DOJ illustrated how aggressive the agency has become in the pursuit of telehealth related fraud. I suspect more, larger in implication (dollar value, geographic spread), will drop publicly in the next … Read more
Just announced this morning, CMS has finalized two hotly debated proposed rules into final rules. The final rules involve the SNF staffing mandate proposed last year and the Medicaid Access Rule, requiring 80% of payments for Medicaid HCBS programs go to compensation for direct care workers. The Medicaid Rule follows the original proposed rule while … Read more
Happy Hump Day! Busy day so far but wanted to sneak this post in, wrapping up the last two days of posts on budget (federal, Medicare) stuff. This being the third day and post on budgets (and last for a while, I promise), the title fits – cubed. https://rhislop3.com/2024/04/15/monday-budget-day/ https://rhislop3.com/2024/04/16/medpac-report-to-congress-a-wrap-with-monday/ What follows is a different … Read more
Yesterday I wrote a post on President Biden’s healthcare budget. Today, I thought a quick visit back to March and MedPAC’s Annual Report to Congress on payment and program adequacy would be a good “wrapper” – for now. Every year, MedPAC (the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission) reports to the Congress in March on the Medicare … Read more
As much as politics consumes the news, little on policy is included. Most days, the political stuff such as trials, Congressional hearings, back and forth tabloid (almost) stuff is front and center, missing is the “meat”. Reminds me of the 80’s Wendy’s commercial titled, “Where’s the beef?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riH5EsGcmTw While I know that the national election, … Read more
TGIF! It’s been a long week with the eclipse and lots of economic news plus all the stuff going on in the Middle East. My inbox is flooded so weekend reading will need to include a lot of parsing and pitching. On Tuesday in the Senate, a bill was introduced by Senators Blumenthal (CT) and … Read more
Happy Eclipse Monday! The post title is meant as a bit of fun but there is a bit of relevancy as well. Billing fraud occurs via a process of hiding what actually has transpired (or should have) with the care of a patient. The most typical fraud is overbilling or charging the government for care … Read more
Happy Hump Day! As I wrote in a post on Monday regarding CMS’ Proposed Rule for SNFs, ’tis the season. This time of year, is when CMS drops proposed changes to reimbursement and other programmatic elements for all provider types, save Home Health which comes a little later (Home Health rate year is calendar year … Read more
It’s that time of year again where CMS begins to drop various rule proposals for updates to provider groups under PPS. From Hospitals, to SNFs, to Home Health and Hospice, each industry segment will see a proposed series of rate and programmatic (rule) updates from CMS. This is normal and it occurs at about the … Read more
Followers know that I don’t write much about politics, staying pretty straight-forward on health policy and economics topics. A little diversion occurs today, but honestly, not much. We are after all, in an election cycle and thematically (the title), demographics will be center stage but likely, for the wrong reasons. As I watch the election … Read more