No matter if you are on the facility or the partner side of Revenue Cycle Management, there is a lot of information, both legal and regulatory, to keep up with to maximize reimbursements. Here are a few things of interest that we are reading right now:
A whopping 21% of rural hospitals in the US are on the verge of closing, according to a 2019 report by Navigant. That's 430 rural hospitals across the country that are on the brink of closure. So, why are rural hospitals closing? They're closing because of declining populations in rural areas. As more people move to larger cities, fewer people go to rural hospitals, the number of Americans covered by government health plans has gone up and government reimbursement rates are low, resulting in the hospitals losing money. After losing money long enough, the hospitals close.
The Trump administration couldn’t abolish the Affordable Care Act (ACA), but it did make significant changes to it and work requirements for Medicaid likely to reduce the availability of coverage or discourage enrollment. So, after years of declining uninsured rates, the U.S. saw coverage gains stall--and for some groups, even drop. That’s a key takeaway from The Uninsured and the ACA: A Primer, a 2019 report from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). It provides information on how insurance has changed under the ACA, how many people remain uninsured, who they are and why they lack health coverage. We’re taking a look at what this means for our clients--and how Altruis can help.
The gradually maturing discipline of affective neuroscience is beginning to showcase emotion as much more than a simple reaction to stimuli. Biologists are beginning to accurately predict behavioral states from emotional databanks. Psychologists are collaborating with technologists and neurologists to define a new wave of behavioral health studies, and the results may affect us sooner than we think.
Need another resolution for 2019? Probably not, but we have one for you anyway, and it’s important. We’re counseling our safety-net clients to pay closer attention to what’s going on with CMS.