Category: CMS

At least 37 states have increased spending on mental health in the year since Adam Lanza shot dead 20 children, six school employees and his mother in Newtown, Conn. It’s not just about money, either. States are experimenting with new — and sometimes controversial — ways to raise awareness about psychological distress, to make treatment…

Medicare wants to narrow the discrepancy on what it spends on some health services in different parts of the country. In the meantime, UnitedHealthcare is dropping hundreds of doctors from its Medicare Advantage plans and the Government Accountability Office says Medicare doesn’t know how well its contractors’ anti-fraud efforts are working. …read more

As more people gain access to coverage as a result of the health law’s expansion of the state-federal insurance program for the poor, finding doctors willing to treat them may be a challenge. Other stories look at how Americans in similar circumstances face vastly different health coverage options because of where they live. …read more

Drastic reimbursement cuts for image-guided breast biopsies, and other medical imaging techniques in the 2014 Medicare Fee Schedule Final Rule, may further reduce women’s access to mammography and other breast cancer services. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services directly cut imaging reimbursement every year since 2007. This, along with 12 Medicare imaging cuts in…

While many Americans have struggled to sign up for insurance on the troubled healthcare.gov website, enrollment is moving faster for Medicaid in states that opted into the expanded program. …read more

The American Hospital Association (AHA) is urging the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to expedite its ICD-10 testing plans to make sure testing begins no later than January 2014 and that it is made available to all hospitals. The American Hospital Association (AHA) is urging the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)…

The American Hospital Association is urging the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to expedite its ICD-10 testing plans to make sure testing begins by January 2014 and that it is made available to all hospitals. read more …read more

Two prominent physicians this week pointed out a basic but, in the era of information as a commodity, sometimes overlooked truth about EMRs: They increase the number of people with access to your medical data thousands of times over. Dr. Mary Jane Minkin said in a Wall Street Journal video panel on EMR and privacy…

While California providers are stepping up their use of EMRs, they’re still behind on some other measures of health IT adoption, according to a new report by the California HealthCare Foundation. First, the positives. California physicians who use EMRs grew from 37 percent in 2008 to 59 percent in 2013. The report also concluded that…

One Florida-based hospital management group is now in a rush to revise its financial statements after realizing it owes the government more than $31 million because the group recorded the hospitals’ Medicare and Medicaid electronic health record payments as income. read more …read more