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Medicare Proposes Higher Hospice Payments
The CMS intends increase Medicare payments to hospices and also make several tweaks to policy definitions and procedures to ensure more accurate reimbursement.
The CMS intends increase Medicare payments to hospices and also make several tweaks to policy definitions and procedures to ensure more accurate reimbursement.
The proposed payment rule would increase hospice payments by 1.3% for an estimated $230 million more than they received in fiscal 2014.
The rule also seeks to clarify the meaning of “terminally ill” in the hospice benefit. To be able to use the Medicare hospice benefit, a patient must be deemed to have a life expectancy of six months or less if the illness runs its normal course. While this has long been the standard, the CMS says the medical community has continued to express interest in a more nuanced definition.
As a result, the agency is seeking feedback on a definition that would take into account a person's physical, emotional, social and intellectual processes that collectively are causing progressive impairment of body systems.
Read the full story here: http://bit.ly/1ii76p8
Source: Modern Healthcare
Laundromats as a New Frontier in Community Health, Medicaid Outreach
May 29th 2025Lindsey Leininger, PhD, and Allister Chang, MPA, highlight the potential of laundromats as accessible, community-based settings to support Medicaid outreach, foster trust, and connect families with essential health and social services.
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New Research Challenges Assumptions About Hospital-Physician Integration, Medicare Patient Mix
April 22nd 2025On this episode of Managed Care Cast, Brady Post, PhD, lead author of a study published in the April 2025 issue of The American Journal of Managed Care®, challenges the claim that hospital-employed physicians serve a more complex patient mix.
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