CMS Floats 2.8% Increase For Hospital Inpatient Payments
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is proposing a 2.8% pay increase, or $3.3 billion in additional funding in fiscal year 2024. Hospitals say the pay hike will only barely cover inflation.
Modern Healthcare:
CMS Proposes 2.8% Hospital Inpatient Reimbursement Hike
Hospitals complying with quality reporting rules and the electronic health records meaningful-use policy would get a 2.8% net increase in Medicare reimbursements in fiscal 2024 under the hospital inpatient prospective payment system proposed rule published Monday by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (Turner, 4/10)
Axios:
Hospitals Get A Slight Pay Bump
Payments to offset the costs of charity care for low-income patients will decrease by $115 million. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services heard hospital groups' request for exploring additional payments to safety-net hospitals, however, and has asked for public comment on the matter. Hospital groups said the increase will hardly address inflation. (Dreher and Goldman, 4/11)
In other health care industry developments —
AP:
AMA's First Gay President To Take Over At Tumultuous Time
The first openly gay person to lead the American Medical Association takes the reins at a fractious time for U.S. health care. Transgender patients and those seeking abortion care face restrictions in many places. The medical judgment of physicians is being overridden by state laws. Disinformation is rampant. And the nation isn’t finished with COVID-19.In the two decades since Dr. Jesse Ehrenfeld first got involved with the AMA as young medical resident, the nation’s largest physicians’ group has tried to shed its image as a conservative self-interested trade association. While physician pocketbook issues remain a big focus, the AMA is also a powerful lobbying force for a range of public health issues. (Tanner, 4/9)
Crain's Chicago Business:
CommonSpirit Data Breach Impacted Over 100 Facilities, Cost Millions
CommonSpirit Health, a nationwide Catholic hospital chain, revealed additional details around the impact of a data breach late last year that affected more than 600,000 patients. (Davis, 4/10)
Becker's Hospital Review:
Healthcare Websites Being Flooded With Fake Requests, HHS Says
HHS' Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center is warning healthcare organizations to look out for flood distributed-denial-of-service attacks that could shut down their websites. A trusted third party told HC3 that the fake domain name server requests have been targeting providers since at least November, according to the April 7 notice. The threat actors aim to overload servers with a large number of nonexistent or invalid requests, slowing down the websites. (Bruce, 4/10)
Stat:
Stanford President Defends Decision Not To Correct Paper
Amid an investigation of alleged research misconduct, Stanford University’s president took responsibility in an email to STAT for the decision not to correct or retract a paper at the heart of the controversy and defended his actions. That decision concerned a major study published in the journal Nature in 2009 and co-authored by Marc Tessier-Lavigne, the university’s president and a renowned neuroscientist who at the time was a top researcher at the biotech company Genentech. (Wosen, 4/11)
North Carolina Health News:
Typical Medical Research Hasn’t Included Everyone. This Program Wants To Build The Nation’s Most Diversified Research Database.
A colorful bus with the words “All of Us” on it is crisscrossing the nation, stopping in cities for days at a time — including a stop last week in Charlotte. Folks traveling on the bus aren’t stopping at tourist sites for adventure and exploration. Instead, they’re spending time in the parking lots of local community partners, such as colleges, community centers and libraries, with an ambitious goal of enrolling a million people — or more — of all backgrounds to participate in medical research. (Crumpler, 4/11)
The Boston Globe:
Mass. Hospitals Turn To Controversial Labor Practices To Stretch Beleaguered Staff
With staffing shortages plaguing every part of the health care system, nurses say some hospitals have turned to controversial methods to stretch their existing personnel, from mandating on-call shifts to increasing the number of days nurses must work. According to reports filed with the Department of Public Health, several hospitals have turned to mandatory overtime, which requires nurses to stay beyond their scheduled shift. The practice is prohibited under state law except in cases of emergency. (Bartlett, 4/10)
KHN:
Doctor Shortages Distress Rural America, Where Few Residency Programs Exist
Anger, devastation, and concern for her patients washed over Dr. Bridget Martinez as she learned that her residency training program in rural northeastern Nevada would be shuttered. The doctor in training remembered telling one of her patients that, come July of this year, she would no longer be her physician. Martinez had been treating the patient for months at a local health care center for a variety of physical and psychiatric health issues. “She was like, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do,’” Martinez said. “It almost set her back, I would say, to square one. That’s so distressing to a patient.” (Rodriguez, 4/11)
KHN:
Listen To The Latest ‘KHN Health Minute’
This week’s KHN Health Minute looks at how some lawmakers are reacting to ballooning pay for travel nurses and how states are spending billions of dollars in opioid settlement funds. (4/10)
