Over 60 healthcare legislatures joined in sending a letter to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) administrator Seema Verma regarding an interpretation of National Coverage Determination (NCD) for next-generation sequencing (NGS) that...National News
On Monday, the agency proposed options to make patient data more useful and transferable through open, secure, standardized, and machine-readable formats while reducing restrictive burdens on healthcare providers. Its impact will be felt by Medicare Advantage, Medicaid and plans on the exchange.
The agency is proposing to require MA...Arizona News
Hacienda Healthcare last week agreed to give licensing authority of its facility to the Department of Health Services (ADHS) following dissent from state agencies concerning the Board of Directors decision to cease operations of the Intermediate Care Facility for Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities (ICF-IID).
A joint letter...Arizona News
GT Medical Technologies Inc. secured a total of $10 million in funding during its Series A financing round led by a San Francisco-based venture capital firm, MedTech Venture Partners. The money was raised to help the medical tech company commercialize its radiation therapy technology post-brain operation.
President and CEO of the...Arizona News
The majority of parents in Arizona vaccinate their children, but vaccine coverage is eroding, said the Arizona Department of Health Services.
In the 2017-2018 school year, 5.4 percent of kindergartners and 6th graders were missing one or more vaccinations. This puts those children, and those around them who can’t be vaccinated...Arizona News
All eyes are on the Arizona Legislature as a bill encouraging parity of {Correction Coverage (not rates)} between in-person care and telemedicine makes its way through the lawmaking process. Senate bill 1089, sponsored by now Senator Heather Carter and a host of others, passed through the House Health and Human Services Committee...News
The nation's largest insurer wants the codes to help identify key barriers to care and wants CMS to adopt standards for effective targeting of at-risk populations.Sheila Shapiro, senior vice president for national strategic partnerships in UnitedHealthcare's clinical services team, told Fierce Healthcare that one of the key barriers...National News
In 2017 health spending grew 4.8 percent year-over-year, the second consecutive year of deceleration in spending growth; from 2006 to 2017 growth in health spending per enrollee averaged 4.4 percent annually for the privately insured - Medicare averaged 2.4 percent and Medicaid, 1.6 percent, according to research from The Urban...Arizona News
Election season is starting to heat up as numerous democratic candidates are eager to announce their bid for presidency and chime in with their ideas for the trendiest discussion--Medicare for All. The bill, most famously introduced by Vermont Senator and former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, would create a single-payer...Arizona News
A new report coming from the White House argues that the Trump administration's changes to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have had a beneficial effect on its marketplace. The Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) report suggests the policy mandate changes actually do not undermine the law. It is an argument against the Democratic claim that...News
With nearly 60% of providers allowed to exclude themselves from the Quality Payment Program, the groups that have invested in technology and improved systems have not been able to reap the rewards originally promised in the MIPS program under MACRA. Under MACRA, providers were promised that their Medicare multiplier would go up if they...National News
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina (BCBSNC) announced last month its Blue Premier program, a value-based model of healthcare that binds performance directly to payment. BCBSNC and five other health systems are responsible for fostering better outcomes with a lower cost.
The health systems include:
Cone Health
...News
CMS wants to give Medicare Advantage (MA) plans more flexibility to offer previously non-covered supplemental benefits that will help chronic patients, adjust risk adjustment scores to reflect costs of beneficiaries with multiple conditions, and effectively raise the MA Revenue by 1.59 percent. Last year the revenue bump for plans...Arizona News
The House of Representatives Health and Human Services Committee unanimously passed HB2118 last month, a bill that would increase the accountability and transparency on how Arizona health boards deal with medical impostors.
An ABC 15 two-year investigation into unlicensed healthcare in Arizona sparked the push for this bill in the...Arizona News
On Tuesday, Feb. 5, former Hacienda Healthcare nurse Nathan Sutherland pleaded not guilty for raping and impregnating a disabled 29-year-old woman in a vegetative state for nearly two decades. Sutherland was arrested last month after the woman unexpectedly gave birth to a baby boy on Dec. 29.
The unprecedented birth in December...Arizona News
Arizona's House Health & Human Services Committee unanimously passed HB2068, a bill sponsored by Republican Nancy Barto to allow CNSs prescribing authority in behavioral health inpatient facilities, recovery care centers and some outpatient treatment centers.
The bill requires that a Clinical Nurse Specialist (CNS) meet certain...National News
A new study released last month by the Georgetown Center on Health Insurance Reforms dove into states and their experience overseeing short-term insurance, which expanded from three to 12 months under the Trump administration. The study found that state officials are lacking data about which insurers are actively marketing the...National News
Providing data insights that drive operational changes and improve organizational agility in the midst of changing payment and delivery models requires confidence. A Kaufman Hall survey of healthcare executives charged with performance management representing more than 160 hospitals, health systems and organizations reveals insights of...National News
According to a widely reported May 2018 study, "The Price Ain’t Right? Hospital Prices and Health Spending on the Privately Insured," researchers found hospital prices rather than physician charges drove healthcare spending growth for the privately insured.
The authors of the study argue that because most healthcare pricing data...Arizona News
Arizona's Medicaid agency reported the insurer faced serious challenges with provider contracts, loads and claims payment after its migration of its provider network into a single database.
According to the Arizona Healthcare Cost Containment System (AHCCCS), the claims dashboard submitted by Arizona Complete Health (ACH) "underscores...Arizona News
In December, a 29-year-old woman in a vegetative state for over a decade gave birth to a baby boy and initiated a rape investigation that bled into the new year. Last week, Gov. Doug Ducey called for a "complete replacement" of the board at Hacienda Healthcare. Now that the alleged perpetrator, Nathan Sutherland, has been arrested,...Arizona News
A longtime leader on health issues in the Arizona legislature, Barto talked with the Sate of Reform about the issues she expects to be talking about this session.
Here are a few excerpts from the interview with Rep. Barto who represents a portion of Northeastern Maricopa County. Her comments on new health insurance options, including...Arizona News
On Friday, January 15, 2019 the non-profit system broke ground on its first rehab hospital under a joint venture partnership agreement with Select Medical that includes new facilities in metro Phoenix, West Valley and East Valley.
The new facility, Banner Rehabilitation Hospital – Phoenix, will cover 71,480 square-foot and three...Arizona News
The Trump administration may have met defeat in repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA), but the steps taken over the last two years to dismantle the legislation prove there are ramifications. The latest Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index, published last week highlighted a 2.8 percentage-point increase since 2016 in the...Arizona News
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announces its consideration to add coverage for acupuncture under the Medicare program for chronic lower back pain. The consideration for acupuncture comes in light of the opioid epidemic spreading across the country and the evidence behind effectiveness for non-drug treatments of a...
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