Medicare RACs at a crossroads
CMS wants to focus on improper payment prevention, but will providers see fewer burdens? With Medicare’s “two midnight rule” set to take effect later this year and audit appeals facing …
CMS proposes waiting longer to pay Medicare Auditors
Medicare officials want to make it harder for their recovery-audit companies to collect fees for auditing hospital and doctor bills. Earlier this week, the Government Accountability Office gave the CMS …
CMS Website Finally Recognizes ICD-10 Delay
Weeks after the President signed the temporary Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) “doc fix” bill that included a one-year extension to ICD-10 implementation, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) …
Industry ‘ready’ for prior auths
Industry stakeholders support CMS’s plans to expand the PMD demo—with a few tweaks. “I’m all for it,” said Peggy Walker, billing specialist at VGM. “I’m ready for more prior auths.” …
OIG Issues Report on Limited Compliance with Medicare’s Face-to-Face Requirement for Home Health Services
On April 9, 2014, the US Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General’s (OIG) Office of Evaluation and Inspections (OEI) issued a report (OEI-01-12-00390) entitled “Limited …
How private are your health records?
Recent highly publicized security breaches at Target and Neiman Marcus made information security front-page news. Now the latest bug nicknamed “Heartbleed”—which impacts the very code (Open SSL) that keeps servers …
Industry Reactions to ICD-10 Delay
President Barack Obama, recently, put his signature on the Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014. In effect, one provision of the new law served to delay ICD-10 implementation until …
Mobile IT services expanding in healthcare, but greater progress needed
Healthcare providers now routinely use mobile health applications in a variety of ways, helping to drive operational efficiencies and improvements in care. However, for all of the progress made in …