An ICD-10 contingency plan is needed in case the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is unable to process the new codes, members of Congress said in a letter to Acting Administrator Andy Slavitt. Read more here.
ICD-10 should not only be delayed, but scrapped, said Steven Stack, the incoming president of the American Medical Association, throwing his organization’s support behind a bill by Texas Republican Rep. Ted Poe delaying its rollout. “We support Rep. Poe’s bill,” he said. “We strongly support that.” Instead, Stack said the United States should wait to change [...]
Mere hours after the Senate pulled off a last-minute repeal of the long-problematic Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula, panelists at a forum hosted by the National Coalition on Health Care made it clear that while the "doc fix" bill represents a major step forward, it is only one piece of the healthcare reform puzzle. [...]
April 15, 2015 -- The U.S. Senate on April 14 passed legislation that permanently repeals Medicare's sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula in a final vote of 92 to 8, just hours before a 21% cut in physician payments under the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule would have been implemented. Read more here.
New CMS report casts doubt on long-term value of doc fix legislation. The Senate is expected today to take up several amendments to a bill that includes a provision to permanently repeal the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR), a measure passed late last month by the House. However, a new report from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid [...]
After a permanent repeal of the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula passed the House of Representatives in late March, the measure's backers in the Senate work to quell a potential revolt from Senate conservatives over its initial $214 billion price tag, according to Reuters. Read more here.
The House of Representatives passed a bipartisan bill to permanently repeal the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula last month, but if the Senate also approves it, the fix may create a new set of problems, according to Vox. Read more here.
Medical devices—and the patients who use them—would substantially benefit from a National Medical Device Postmarket Surveillance System (MDS), charges a new report authored by the Brookings Institution's Engelberg Center for Health Reform with support from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Read more here.
The Joint Commission has released updated accreditation requirements for diagnostic imaging service providers in U.S. hospitals and ambulatory care centers. Although the new rules emphasize imaging safety in positive ways, more specific guidance is needed, according to safety advocates. Read more here.
Recently House of Representative members, Ron Kind (D) from Wisconsin and Erik Paulsen (R) from Minnesota sent a letter to their colleagues asking them to support legislation to repeal the Medical Device Tax. Read more here.