News
Article
CMS
COVID-19
Physician Advisory
Dr. Juliet Ugarte HopkinsMarch 3, 2021
RACMonitor: Deconstructing the Concept of Condition Code 44
Dear Readers,
Article
health
Healthcare
Patient Experience
Physician Advisory
Physician Services
Revenue Cycle
Nina YoungstromFebruary 9, 2021
COSMOS: Readmission Penalties May Be Worth Swallowing For Revenue
Hospitals may want to reconsider how hard they work to stave off certain Medicare readmissions because the penalties from the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program pale compared to the loss of revenue and potential harm to patients who should be back in the hospital, a physician advisor said. That calculation ...
Blog Post
Coding
Finance
Financial Performance
Financial Recovery
Financial Resilience
Physician Advisory
Revenue Capture
Revenue Cycle
Revenue Integrity
Nicole ShinglerFebruary 8, 2021
Moving Past Revenue Cycle Recovery to Achieve Financial Resilience
After a fairly predictable start, 2020’s unforeseen turn into a yearlong (and counting) pandemic created a torrent of financial and clinical challenges for hospitals and health systems. Reduced volume, increasing care complexities and an uncertain economy still remain in 2021 as hospitals continue working toward ...
Article
CMS
Physician Advisory
Dr. Ronald HirschFebruary 3, 2021
RAC Monitor: Medicare Inpatient Pricer Now Available
When I teach Medicare regulations to physician advisors, case managers, and utilization review professionals, it is always interesting to see the reactions when I explain how Medicare calculates how much to pay for an inpatient admission. Most are aware of the Medicare Severity Diagnosis-Related Group (DRG) system ...
Article
CMS
Physician Advisory
Dr. Ronald HirschDecember 18, 2020
RACmonitor: One-Day Medicare Inpatient Surgery Admissions
The CMS proposal to eliminate the Inpatient-Only List, does not mean that all procedures are to be performed as outpatient. On Jan. 18, 2018, RACmonitor published my article titled “CMS Says OK to Admit Total Knee Replacements as Inpatient.” The title created a bit of an uproar, as many thought I was conveying ...
Article
CMS
Physician Advisory
Dr. Ronald HirschDecember 3, 2020
RACmonitor: CMS Accepts Waivers for At-Home Services
During a short Thanksgiving work week, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) found time to make two pretty significant announcements. The first is that they are now accepting waiver requests from hospitals to offer true at-home services. In this program, instead of admitting patients requiring ...
Article
CMS
Physician Advisory
Dr. Ronald HirschDecember 1, 2020
RACmonitor: Total Knee Replacement Added to PEPPER
In the midst of a pandemic, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has decided the time is right to add a new element to the quarterly Program for Evaluating Payment Patterns Electronic Report (PEPPER). This new target area will report the percentage of total knee arthroplasties that were done ...
Article
COVID-19
Physician Advisory
Telehealth
Keith LoriaDecember 1, 2020
Managed Healthcare Executive: 5 Takeaways About Telehealth Boom
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a bumpy ride in the United States, featuring one controversy after another. One of the few areas of agreement is that the widespread adoption of telehealth amid the pandemic has been, by and large, a positive development.
Here are the first 5 ...
Article
CMS
Physician Advisory
Dr. Ronald HirschNovember 4, 2020
RACmonitor: IRF Care Again in Audit Crosshairs
Last week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) released an audit of OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, Ill. In this audit, the majority of the errors were once again due to admissions to inpatient rehab that the OIG’s contracted auditor determined were ...
Article
CMS
Physician Advisory
Dr. Ronald HirschOctober 8, 2020
RACmonitor: Electronically Transmitting Records to QIOs
In a provision glossed over by most, the 2021 Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) Final Rule introduced a requirement that all providers transmit all records to Quality Improvement Organizations (QIOs) via electronic means as of Oct. 1, 2020. As a reminder, the QIOs perform several types of reviews for ...
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