Editor's Note Eligible hospitals, critical access hospitals, and professionals who did not achieve "meaningful use" in the Medicare Electronic Health Record Incentive Program for the 2015 reporting period have until July 1 to apply for a hardship exception from the 2017 payment adjustment.   The streamlined hardship applications reduce the…

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Editor's Note In this study from Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, payments for colectomy under Medicare’s Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Initiative were lower than a fee-for-service payment model, and the proportion of patients contributing to a net negative margin increased. Net negative margins were calculated as the difference between total hospital…

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Editor's Note In this study, Medicare patients having common surgical procedures at critical access hospitals had no significant difference in 30-day mortality than those at noncritical access hospitals (5.4% vs 5.6%), and they had lower rates of serious complications (6% vs 14%) and lower expenditures ($14,450 vs $15, 845). The…

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In this challenging healthcare environment, OR leaders have a fiscal responsibility to help hospitals meet financial goals that contribute to a healthy bottom line. There is no more expensive procedure you can have in the hospital than to spend time in the OR,” says Keith Siddel, PhDc, JD, MBA, CHC.…

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Editor's Note Common measures used to rate hospital safety, such as the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Patient Safety Indicators and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Hospital-acquired Conditions, do not accurately capture the quality of care provided, this study finds. Only one measure out of…

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Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on April 29 approved the San Francisco-based Institute for Medical Quality (IMQ) as a national accrediting organization for Ambulatory Surgery Centers (ASCs) that participate in the Medicare or Medicaid programs (known as deemed status), the May ASC Focus reports. IMQ…

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Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on May 4 released comprehensive ambulatory surgery center (ASC) quality data reports compiled through its Ambulatory Surgery Center Quality Reporting (ASCQR) program. Among the data reported are: Quality data code-based measures, such as wrong site, side, patient, procedure, implant Safe…

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Editor's Note Through its Value Based Purchasing (VBP) program, the  Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) paid bonuses to 231 hospitals with lower quality because their patients were less expensive, this study finds. CMS began measuring both spending and quality in FY 2015 to encourage hospitals to provide more…

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Editor's Note The American Hospital Association (AHA) on April 29 asked the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to suspend their pain-related questions in the Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) Program until concerns are addressed that the questions may contribute to the opioid epidemic, AHA News Now reports. The AHA says…

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Editor's Note Nearly half of US academic medical centers are being penalized by Medicare because their aggressive screening of patients leads to identification of more infections and other complications that trigger penalties, the April 20 Kaiser Health News reports. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) maintains that the…

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