Healthcare, Senior Living, Economics
In news just released, Kindred (the post-acute, skilled, rehab and LTAcH behemoth) has made two separate offers to purchase control of Gentiva, the latest a $14 per share offer consisting of half cash, half stock ($7 and $7). An earlier offer of $13 per share was rejected and it appears the $14 offer will see … Read more
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
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 Ten days or so ago I wrote a post regarding a House bill that repealed the SGR but contained … Read more
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
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post covering the Home Health PPS Final Rule for 2014. As I was writing that post, I simultaneously reviewed the Gentiva/Harden deal plus the recent quarterly earnings of Amedisys and Almost Family (plus their acquisition of SunCrest HealthCare). The earnings reports plus the analytics from these two … Read more
Last Friday, CMS issued its final rules for 2014 Home Health PPS. As is typical within these final rules, earlier proposals are clarified and additional direction for the future becomes clearer. In this case, most people who follow the Home Health industry trends will find the continuation of prior year themes; rate reduction, episodic rebasing, additional reportable quality … Read more