Articles and Blogs

NATIONAL Mandatory bundled radiation oncology demo seeks to upend payment Premera Reaches $10M Settlement with 30 States Over 2014 Data Breach Study: Doctor burnout costs health care system $4.6 billion a year Uber, Lyft see $15B opportunity in healthcare: 4 things to know Hospital execs turning to EHRs, patient portals to improve patient experience... READ MORE

On June 26, 2019, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law a bill dramatically limiting substantial portions of Florida’s Certificate of Need (“CON”) program. The new law takes effect in two phases. Effective July 1, 2019, general hospitals, comprehensive rehabilitation and “tertiary”[i] health services, such as pediatric cardiac catheterization, pediatric open-heart surgery and neonatal... READ MORE

Thanks to a final rule issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”) this spring, Medicare Advantage (“MA”) plans will now be able to offer additional telehealth benefits to enrollees starting in 2020. Historically, MA plans have been able to offer more telehealth services compared to Original Medicare as part of their... READ MORE

NATIONAL Readmissions penalty doing little to slow the spinning of hospitals’ revolving doors Joint replacement penalties for rehospitalizations may have hit their limit 3 things to know about physician salary The Impact of a Hospital Post-Acute Care Program on Value-Based Care 10 health systems with strong finances What Telemedicine’s Growth Rate Means for the... READ MORE

For-profit businesses are generally organized and operated to maximize shareholder value. For this reason, for-profit organizations have inherent limitations in pursuing goals or purposes that conflict with increasing the bottom line for shareholders. While for-profit companies have traditionally had these limitations, in recent years, many for-profit organizations have been presented with a new legal... READ MORE

NATIONAL How to avoid the legal risks of telemedicine HHS OCR Clarifies When Health Plans Can Share PHI Under HIPAA Brigham and Women’s, Emory and more join radiology AI pilot program Hospital groups argue CMS wage index proposal flawed How 4 health IT leaders balance strategy with execution: key thoughts from Ed Marx, Dr.... READ MORE

In a previous article, we reported on CMS’s implementation of new billing edits that will Return to Provider any hospital UB-04 claims that identify a service location that is not an exact match to a Medicare-enrolled location identified in Provider Enrollment, Chain and Ownership System (“PECOS”). As previously reported, those edits were scheduled to be... READ MORE

On June 27, 2019, the last day of its 2018 term, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its third opinion in recent years addressing “the circumstances under which a police officer may administer a warrantless blood alcohol concentration (“BAC”) test to a motorist who appears to have been driving under the influence of alcohol.” Mitchell... READ MORE

NATIONAL Lawsuit sheds light on Amazon’s pharmacy strategy CMS’ first health informatics chief out after 4 months on the job Deals by UnitedHealth, other health giants draw antitrust scrutiny in D.C. Supreme Court to hear insurers’ bid for $12 billion in Obamacare money FDA must guard against bias in AI, focus on patient outcomes... READ MORE

NATIONAL HHS expands health reimbursement coverage 9 hospital, health system construction projects worth $300M or more May healthcare data breaches: More than 2 million patients affected Dual Payment Model for Long Term Care Hospitals Could Boost Hospice Use Uber Health will provide injured workers with transportation to medical appointments These Are The Top Children’s... READ MORE