Holding Off PQRS Negative Payment Adjustment In 2018
For eligible providers who fail to meet the criteria specified for satisfactory reporting or participation in the 2016 Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS), the one thing they can look forward to is a negative payment adjustment. CMS says it will make “no exceptions” here, having mentioned this in the official 2016 PQRS: Implementation Guide. The…
Medical Billing Outsourcing set to go up with changing healthcare provider needs
With more and more government funding flowing into healthcare, pressure on providers to optimize their operations has been building heavily. The latter is aimed at making the best use of monetary allocations, and this has benefited vendors who comprise the medical billing outsourcing market around the globe. Healthcare spending in the developed countries may…
Last Minute Approval For The Surprise Medical Bill Ban
The legislative session on the final day passed a proposed bill that was intended to safeguard consumers from ‘surprise’ medical bills from the healthcare providers out of their insurer’s network. The Florida House agreed about the passing of the bill with a Senate change shortly before it was dispersed. The result was welcomed by the…
CMS Makes Provider Revalidation Process Mandatory
CMS has taken the steps to clarify revalidation process of healthcare providers who have registered in the Medicare program. According to sources privy to the organization, CMS is very strict in identifying the genuine healthcare providers. As part of the revalidation process, the CMS conducted a conference call on 1st March. During this conference call,…
CMS To Tighten Provider Environment Screening Activities
The recent decision by CMS to initiate new steps in strengthening provider environment screening is receiving good appreciation from the healthcare industry. CMS announced its decision through a blog post that was published in February 22, 2016. In the blog post, CMS clearly tells that it has come up with a number of new strategies…
Large Companies Band Together To Solve Rising Healthcare Cost
What sets big companies such as the likes of Coca-Cola, IBM, and Macy’s together, despite the fact that they serve different industries? The one new thing they have in common is that they also do healthcare. Beginning this year, these three corporations, along with 20 others in the country, will be forming a coalition of…
CBO Says Federal Deficit-GDP Ratio Likely To Rise This Year
Towards the end of January, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) let out their annual report on Budget and Economic Outlook. CBO is a congressional agency of non-partisan nature, which primarily serves as the economic and budgetary analysis resource to the Capitol. Aside from reporting on monitored economic and budgetary trends in wide areas of concern,…
2016 Open Enrolment Period Has Ended
The 2016 open enrollment period for health insurance plans sold in HIEs has officially ended. With this over now, information is starting to flow in towards the third open enrollment period. In the middle of January, HHs had announced that 8.9 million customers have signed up for health-coverage using the HealthCare.gov platform or had their…
CMS Urges Practices To Apply For Hardship Exemption
CMS announced towards the end of last month that they have created a new online system, which allows submitting applications for hardship exemption for the Meaningful Use Incentive Program (MU) for EHR technology. The new system also expedites the application process by letting providers choose from a list of categories. This is a change from…