Healthcare, Senior Living, Economics
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
TGIF! A frequent reader sent me a note earlier in the week and asked if I would drop in more clinically oriented stuff from time to time. I asked for details, and she said stuff “that is germane to patient care and operational improvements – QA/QI stuff”. So, today’s post is by request, sort of. … Read more
Monday, Fitch Ratings dropped a Non-Rating Commentary about staffing challenges in Life Plan and SNF organizations. Per the release, “Though growing for some time, payrolls for U.S. life plan communities (LPCs) and skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) are still well off the pace needed to reach a full post-pandemic recovery.” Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data … 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
On Monday, a good portion of the U.S. saw all or portions of a total eclipse. If you were in the “zone of totality”, you saw a heck of a show and witnessed the side-effects of day turning to dark and the weather turning noticeably colder. Cool stuff. Unfortunately, within the past week or so, … Read more
SNFs this one is for you! Yesterday’s post on billing fraud was too. It almost feels as if this second week of April has a compliance theme while last week, the focus was on CMS Proposed Rules. Assuredly, Wednesday will bring some different news as March CPI data drops. This news came last week via … 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