Integrating Behavioral Health, Primary Care can Save Money

The Sustaining Healthcare Across Integrated Primary Care Efforts (SHAPE) demonstration, a Colorado project that integrated behavioral health services into primary care settings, saved about $1.08 million in net cost savings for Medicare, Medicaid and dual-eligible patients, according to a new report in Translational Behavioral Medicine.

Updates for Medicare Diabetes Prevention Program Expanded Model:

With the intent of lowering the rate of progression to Type II diabetes and improving overall health, the CMS has finalized the Medicare Diabetes Prevention Program (MDPP) expanded model, which will allow qualified providers to begin furnishing MDPP services this year.

Longer Home Health Visits Tied to Lower Hospital Rates

Home health care visits that are longerby just one minutemay be tied to lower hospital readmission rates. That’s the keyfinding from a recent study from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

CMS Unveils Strategy to Improve Rural Healthcare

On Tuesday the CMS announced its first Rural Health Strategy, which looks to improve access to and quality of care in rural areas. CMS Administrator Seema Verma said the effort looks to “apply a rural lens to the vision and work of the agency” and was the culmination of input from rural providers and beneficiaries.

The Role of Palliative Care in Pediatrics

Since the 1960s when the hospice movement really began, we have been slowly changing our approach to management of chronic illness. With the addition of palliative care, a defined medical specialty since 2006, we have been able to take the lessons learned in that nearly 60 years of hospice experience and apply them to not only the terminally ill, but also for chronic disease management.

AMA Calls for Reduced MIPS Reporting Period

Reducing the Merit-based Incentive Payment System reporting period to 90 consecutive days instead of one year would "reduce administrative burden and ensure physicians have sufficient time to report after receiving performance feedback from CMS," the American Medical Association argues in a letter sent to CMS Administrator Seema Verma.

Avicenna Medical Systems is pleased to announce its partnership with GAP Healthcare Solutions to provide outsourced MARCQI patient survey services for Patient Reported Outcomes (PROs) for patients undergoing arthroplasty surgery.

ACA Plans Expanded Coverage for Chronic Conditions

As the Affordable Care Act increased the number of Americans with health coverage, 45% of adult ACA exchange enrollees had chronic conditions in 2014 and 2015. That’s a higher percentage than those with employer-based insurance and in nongroup plans not in the exchanges, according to a new study in Health Affairs.

Care Management Programs Overview:

Beginning in 2013, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services introduced transition of care management (TCM), reimbursing providers for helping their patients with the transition from hospital to home.  Following the introduction of TCM; in 2015 CMS introduced the original chronic care management code, CPT code 99490, to pay providers for delivering non-face-to-face care to Medicare patients with two or more chronic conditions.

In 2017 CMS enhanced the CCM...

MIPS: Find out If You Are in or out for 2018

Finally. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has released an online tool that enables clinicians to determine whether they must participate in the Merit-Based Incentive Payment Program (MIPS) this year. CMS on Friday put out a notice that it has released an updated MIPS Participation Lookup Tool on its web site that will allow clinicians to check on their 2018 eligibility status.