Featured Articles

Recent issues in Oklahoma, Nebraska portend a growing crisis. The news coming out of Oklahoma was grim: Pauls Valley Regional Medical Center couldn’t keep its doors open, despite a GoFundMe campaign, as well as a reported solicitation from country music star Toby Keith. And in September, Latimer County General Hospital,…

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has informed state Medicaid directors that it intends to expand mental health treatment services via a new Medicaid demonstration project, the agency announced in a press release issued Tuesday. In a letter to the state Medicaid directors, CMS reportedly outlined existing and…

Does healthcare IT really improve medical care? This series of articles was inspired by a recent hospitalization of this author in Spain, after which the bill showed that medical care costs there are less than 10 percent of those in the United States. All of the services rendered in Spain…

The final rule on provider-based clinics is expected in early November. To understand changes being made relative to provider-based clinics, both Federal Registers must be read, and due to the complexity of the language, studied with care. Note that these are proposed rule changes. We will have to wait until…

Many MAOs have overplayed the significance of this decision. On Sept. 7, in federal district court in Washington, D.C., in a case in which the Medicare Advantage Organizations (MAOs) in the UnitedHealth Group family of companies sued Alex Azar, the Secretary for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services…

Does healthcare IT really improve medical care? EDITOR’S NOTE: RACmonitor investigative reporter and New York attorney Edward Roche recently found himself in a life-threatening situation while on a business trip in Barcelona, Spain. Here, Roche recounts his story, the medical conditions to which he was a beneficiary, and the good…

Second iteration of demonstration poses challenge for home health providers Illinois is a state often cited as being something of a microcosm for the country, and if that is any indication, home health providers not just there, but everywhere, will want to keep an eye on the second iteration of…

CMS is encouraging the integration of healthcare providers so that their size is increased to have averaged payments represent a break-even or better. CMS (the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) views payment from a national perspective on a statistically averaged basis. Individual providers such as physicians, clinics, hospitals, home…