Monday of this week was October 1, 2012, the first day of Federal Fiscal Year 2013. The first day of a new Supreme Court session and the first day of Medicare hospital readmission penalties. The mass media has finally heard that Medicare will reduce payments to hospitals with high readmission rates by a predetermined percentage […]
by Liz Seegert Last week, staff writer Liz Seegert examined the Republican Party Platform in terms of its impact on home health care. (http://homecaretechreport.com/article.asp?id=1589) In part two, she takes the same close look at the just-released Democratic platform. It was a bit of a surprise that home health care and home health technology are not […]
by Liz Seegert With one political convention wrapping up this week and another beginning Monday, we assigned staff writer Liz Seegert to study the published platforms of each party and analyze how home care and hospice would be affected if the Medicare sections of either platform were to become law. First up, the Republican Party […]
Five years ago, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) ordered CMS to stop using Social Security numbers on Medicare cards. According to a new report and testimony to Congress by the General Accounting Office (GAO), CMS has not gotten around to complying yet. Details about how CMS intends to correct this oversight and the […]
The U.S. Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General has released a scathing report of home health billing practices. To place some controls on the degree of fraud and abuse it detected, OIG called for CMS to impose a moratorium on opening new home health care agencies in Texas and Florida, where it says […]
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that, as of July 1, 89 new Accountable Care Organizations (ACO) began serving 1.2 million Medicare beneficiaries in 40 states and the District of Columbia. ACOs are organizations formed by groups of doctors and other health care providers that have agreed to work together to coordinate […]
By Audrey Kinsella A patient we will call “Miss Devyn” was referred to home health services following knee replacement surgery. A case manager at Indian River Home Care, which serves Indian River County, Florida, assigned Devyn a remote telehealth monitor. Following company policy, the case manager set up the device to track her pain and […]
