The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued proposed rules for the FY 2025 inpatient prospective payment system (IPPS) and long-term care hospital (LTCH) payment system. The agency proposes raising payments and the industry decried the boost as insufficient.
Hospitals will receive a 2.6% increase or $2.9 billion across...
The independent physician is an endangered species due to rapid corporate consolidation, according to a new report.
More than three-quarters of all U.S. doctors are employed by a corporate entity, be it hospitals, health insurers, private equity or some other corporate form. Healthcare Dive explains that much of the acceleration...
The Massachussets Health Policy Commission will meet Thursday and discuss a hotly contested sale of a physician contractor to OptumCare in an arrangement that could flag antitrust laws.
Stewardship Health Inc.'s Steward Health Care Network currently employs primary care physicians for contracting in nine states. The deal could add...
The government is publicly reacting to the disruption in healthcare services caused by the Change Healthcare cyberattack and subsequent extended outage, but tangible consequences for UnitedHealth Group have yet to emerge.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee met this week to discuss the attack, but according to Modern Healthcare,...
The practice will now operate under the name Banner – University Medicine Orthopedic Clinic at 1555 E. River Road in Tucson.
The clinic's orthopedic team treats adults and children, as well as competitive athletes, including professional, college, and high school athletes and sports teams. The University Orthopedic Specialists...
As CMS takes swift actions to protect consumers from unauthorized agents and brokers switching their ACA Marketplace plans, a lawsuit was filed against insurance agency call centers, former President Trump did an about-face on the ACA, and a recent report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities provides policy solutions to...
Since the start of the Medicaid unwinding last April, Arizona has dis-enrolled 611,144 members, more than half for procedural reasons, including nearly 211,000 children, and approved renewals for nearly 2 million. Nationally, Medicaid dis-enrollments total 20 million for the year, including 5 million children, with more than two-thirds...
Last week, the popular pediatric health system announced that after a nationwide search, it hired its current Division Chief of Emergency Medicine, Blake Bulloch, MD as its new chief medical officer (CMO) and Liz Zorn, MD and Kelly Kelleher, MD as associate CMOs. This week, Phoenix Children's also announced it promoted to Physician in...
On Monday, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Inspector General Christi A. Grimm provided testimony to the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations that included the federal government has demonstrated significant problems with risk adjustment in Medicare Advantage, raising...National News
This week, America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the American Medical Association (AMA), and the National Association of ACOs (NAACOS) released a playbook on voluntary best practices as part of their efforts together to advance the adoption of value-based care arrangements in the private sector to improve the quality, equity, and...
Last week, the Florida Supreme Court held that the state could implement a highly restrictive recent law that would all but completely outlaw the practice of abortion in the state. Not to be outdone, the Arizona Supreme Court resurrected an archaic law that predates statehood by fifty years to all but completely outlaw the practice of...
A new study from health policy analysis group the Commonwealth Foundation has found that public health insurance plans, also known as state public option-style plans, are moving forward in reducing consumer costs.
Colorado, Nevada and Washington have all adopted similar public option legislation that requires private insurers to offer...
Two wrongful death lawsuits have been filed against the state of Arizona for alleged mismanagement of sober living homes that led to the deaths of Indigenous men.
Investigators into the sober living home fraud scandal have said that Indigenous people were targeted for their unique payer status and social vulnerability. Under the...
Assisted living providers received a major regulatory blow from the Arizona Legislature this week after it passed an overhaul on best practices, training requirements and penalties for delinquent facilities. And hospitals net a win as a bill championed by the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association (AzHHA) moves out of the Senate...
UnitedHealth Group (UHG) subsidiary Change Healthcare has a big mess to clean up after the cyberattack on the company that hobbled the American healthcare system for more than a month. Now, Change must contend with the legal challenges of several class-action suits related to the systems outage and the looming threat of future...
Amy Perry will become Banner Health's president and CEO; she joined Arizona's largest health system and largest employer in November 2021 after serving as the executive vice president and CEO of the Morristown, New Jersey-based, Atlantic Health System’s hospital division.
Fine assumed the role of president and CEO of Banner Health...
As of last Friday, April 5, 2024, most Dignity Health facilities and providers in Arizona are no longer considered part of Aetna’s network. Dignity Health Yavapai Regional Medical Center remains in-network but Yavapai Regional Medical Group is subject to termination.
Aetna and Dignity Health have been negotiating for several months...
The coalition supporting a ballot measure that could add abortion rights to Arizona's constitution has announced that it has collected the requisite number of voter signatures three months ahead of the deadline. Florida abortion supporters have done the same, but are now fighting a new six-week abortion ban that's set to go into effect...
Pending regulatory approval, hospital operator Steward Healthcare has sold its nationwide physician network to UnitedHealth Group subsidiary Optum.
Optum already owns Surgical Consultants of America (SCA Health) and is the largest employer of physicians in the country, according to Becker's. Dallas-based Steward Health Care's...CMS Rules
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released the proposed rule for 2025 hospice reimbursement including a 2.6% raise in per diems and two new quality measures.
The 2.6% net increase would amount to a $705 million increase from FY 2024, including a 3% market basket update and a 0.4% cut for productivity. According to the...
UnitedHealth Group (UHG) subsidiary Change Healthcare still maintains that no patient data was compromised in the cyberattack that caused a shutdown of company services throughout the month of March.
The company has begun the review process for potentially compromised public health information and will begin releasing medical claims...
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes petitioned the court to assume jurisdiction over a Mesa assisted living facility and appoint a receiver to oversee the facility's operations properly, ensuring residents receive the care they deserve. The petition for receivership characterizes Heritage Village as "arguably the most infamous assisted...
The VillageMD clinic closures were announced in late 2023 are part of Walgreens' larger $1 billion cost-cutting initiative. Last year, Walmart announced plans to expand its health center presence by adding over 30 locations across four states in 2024; the mega retailer has now scaled down its plans to 22 centers, concentrated in Florida...CMS Rules
After another record-breaking enrollment period, CMS is warning states using HealthCare.gov to be wary of unscrupulous agents switching consumers' ACA plans without consent to pocket commissions. Also this week the federal agency released a final rule setting network adequacy standards for Marketplace plans and giving states the option...