Month: January 2021
Large hospitals and health systems have been inconsistent in their approaches to compliance with a major new rule that requires them to post payer-negotiated rates online, and experts warn this could cause confusion for consumers. Hospitals had to post the payer-negotiated rates for 300 shoppable services online starting Jan. 1. But while some hospitals have posted spreadsheets with their ...
With COVID-19 patients pushing hospitals across Southern Nevada to near capacity, one Las Vegas hospital issued a disaster declaration over the weekend. St. Rose Dominican Hospital, San Martin campus, issued the declaration Saturday, when a surge in patients increased occupancy in its intensive care unit to 137 percent, according to an email obtained by the Review-Journal that was sent by the administration to hospital physicians.
With most Americans focused on COVID-19 vaccines, pharmaceutical companies are quietly raising the list prices of name-brand prescription drugs at a torrid pace. January is typically when increases hit the U.S. market. Already, more price hikes by drugmakers have been recorded in less than half a month (813) this year than for all of January 2020 (737), according to research by Ohio ...
President Biden plans Thursday to issue a new national strategy to respond to the coronavirus pandemic and to take executive actions intended to make tests and vaccines more abundant, schools and travel safer, and states better able to afford their role in the long road back to normal life. On his second day in office, ...
California lawmakers are wasting little time debating the $227 billion budget proposal Gov. Gavin Newsom announced last week. In a break with the normally slow-moving process that drags out for months, budget committees in both the Assembly and state Senate convened this week to review the governor's spending plan, which includes immediate financial relief to families and businesses hard hit by the pandemic.
A COVID financial relief program which helps small businesses continue to pay workers resumed offering loans this week, the Small Business Administration (SBA) announced. The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) was reopened to businesses that did not receive a first round forgivable PPP loan on Monday. The program expanded to accept applications from certain businesses that did receive funding during the first round (so-called “Second Draw” businesses) on Wednesday.
CMS will raise Medicare Advantage plan payments by 4.08%, the agency announced Friday. It also signed off on its controversial proposal to complete a multiyear phase-in of a new payment methodology. The new process will adjust plan payments using diagnoses solely from encounter data—information created by healthcare providers about patients’ medical conditions and treatment.
A new KFF analysis examines how new federal rules on price transparency for health services may affect patient decision-making and market pricing. As of January 1, 2021, the United States Department of Health and Human Services requires that hospitals publish payer-negotiated rates for common services on their websites. A second set of rules, which requires insurers ...
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Thursday proposed a $1.9 trillion rescue package to combat the economic downturn and the Covid-19 crisis, outlining the type of sweeping aid that Democrats have demanded for months and signaling the shift in the federal government’s pandemic response as Mr. Biden prepares to take office. The package includes more ...
U.S. President-elect Joe Biden on Friday said he would order increased production of syringes and other supplies to ramp up vaccinations against COVID-19 and improve upon the Trump administration rollout that he called a “dismal failure.” Under Biden’s plan, federal disaster-relief workers would set up thousands of vaccination centers, where retired doctors would administer shots ...