Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes has vowed to improve nursing home quality and transparency throughout the state. Her biggest target is the Ensign Group, one of the largest publicly traded nursing home chains in the country, which owns nearly a third of Arizona nursing home beds.
A study on the Ensign Group found that revenues for...
This week media outlets covered new AI biometric remote monitoring strategies to support better care in skilled nursing facilities (SNFs), the future role of prescription digital therapeutics to improve medication adherence and provide individualized treatment, and a successful Northwell Health Pregnancy Chats tool that's guiding...
Nursing homes are decrying the severity of the nursing workforce shortage as the minimum staffing proposal looms large.
More than 500 nursing home providers joined a protest on Capitol Hill this week to sound the alarm on legislation that could implement a minimum staffing measure for nursing homes. According to Skilled Nursing News,...
Today is the last day of the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE), and policies are rapidly shifting to accommodate the post-pandemic healthcare landscape in the U.S.
On Tuesday, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) announced that it would continue allowances for telehealth companies to prescribe controlled substances for six...
On Monday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed the FY 2024 Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) Payment Prospective Systems (PPS) rates. It includes an increase of 3.7%, or $1.2 billion in Medicare Part A payments to SNFs.
The rate increase reflects a 6.1% market basket update to the payment rates comprised of a...
Nursing facility operators are finding optimism in the new year, following two years of unprecedented staffing challenges and constricting cost increases.
The intensity of concerns regarding the staffing issues is beginning to recede although cost concerns related to inflation remain, according to the McKnight's 2023 Outlook Survey....National News
Last Friday, the Medicare Payment Advisory Committee (MedPAC) held a public virtual meeting to assess payments for hospice services and make recommendations for updating payments. It determined that it would recommend a 3% cut to Medicare base payments made to skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) in 2024.
The meeting presages the...
The winter surge of COVID-19 has hit Arizona. Cases are on the rise with seniors hit especially hard. In Arizona, the influx of cases in tandem with the high volume of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) cases has some Arizona officials urging masking in public places and the resumption of mitigating practices.
There were 12,987 new...
As the Biden administration promised, the U.S. Department of Health Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) is sifting through claims submitted by Medicare Advantage (MA) plans, looking for fraudulent activity.
The OIG published two audits this week on Medicare Advantage Compliance of diagnostic codes submitted to the Centers...Arizona News
In reports received from nursing home chains from March to June 2020, one complaint included an Ensign Group nursing home in Arizona which alleged a staffing coordinator had been making CNAs and nurses work despite reporting COVID symptoms and refusing to let people call off when they reported COVID symptoms.
The Report's Key...National News
The federal government is curious about states' use of value-based payment (VBP) in nursing facility reimbursement through Medicaid programs. In August, the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) published an issue brief on its investigation into which states use VBP and how well the systems work.
On the federal level,...CMS Rules
In a surprising turn of events, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued the FY 2023 Skilled Nursing Facility Prospective Payment System (SNF PPS) Final Rule which contains a 2.7% increase in Medicare rates to nursing homes. When the proposed payment rule was published in April, the agency had proposed cutting Medicare Part...National News
At this time two years ago, the future of alternative payment models (APMs) and accountable care organizations (ACOs) was uncertain and to some degree the entire landscape of value-based care hung in the balance while the Trump administration sorted out the details of the Direct Contracting payment models. But now, under the Biden...CMS Rules
It's no secret that the Biden administration is planning to implement mandatory staffing levels in nursing facilities that are reimbursed through Medicare and Medicaid. In the most recent step to announcing this measure last Thursday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) published new guidance on staffing measures tied to...
As nursing homes across the country are grappling with staff shortages exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Biden administration is considering a rule that nursing homes spend most of their Medicaid payments on direct care for residents rather than operations or capital improvements.
According to Modern Healthcare, the rule would...
Value-based care is undoubtedly helped by new technologies and information-sharing for providers and insurers alike, but the problems that VBC faces are multifaceted and require more than just an assist from software.
Health information exchanges (HIEs) are in a uniquely strong position to help payers and providers in the quest for...
On Monday evening, a draft of an abortion opinion from the U.S. Supreme Court was leaked and published in the national press. The leak concerns the case Dodd v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which challenges the constitutionality of a 15-week abortion ban passed by the Mississippi state legislature in 2015. Written by Supreme...
On Monday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) filed the Fiscal Year 2023 Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) Prospective Payment System (PPS) Proposed Rule. The reimbursements include a 3.9% increase to industry reimbursements, but in aggregate the impact of payment policies would result in a decrease of $320 million in...
Calls for an end to the formal declaration of public health emergency (PHE) related to the COVID-19 pandemic are gaining traction in the lull following the surge in cases, hospitalizations and deaths related to the Omicron variant. Nursing homes are only just now required to demonstrate full vaccination of all staff members, and...
As COVID-19 cases drastically subside following the surge related to the Omicron variant, Americans are beginning to relax restrictions and anxieties related to the pandemic. However, other countries around the world are now struggling to contain Omicron surges that arrived much later and experts are warning that complacency could invite...
