Nick Hut
About the Author
Nick Hut is a former newspaper reporter with more than a decade of experience at HFMA. His HFMA Daily reporting is considered a top benefit of membership as members have come to rely on Hut’s daily insights on policy, legal and business developments. He has been at the forefront of major industry news, garnering a following from national media. Nick has earned multiple national awards, including two first-place honors in 2024 from the American Society of Business Publication Editors for excellence in analysis and reporting.
Latest Work
A new 340B dispute resolution process could create more opportunities for providers
Regulatory updates to the administrative dispute resolution (ADR) process in the 340B Drug Pricing Program seem likely to expedite the filing of claims over manufacturers’ refusal to offer discounts on drugs distributed at contract pharmacies. HHS and the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), which administers the 340B program, published a final rule that modifies…
The FTC’s new non-compete regulations will affect hospital agreements with physicians, unless courts intervene
Hospital advocates expressed concern about the implications of new federal regulations that prohibit employers from including non-compete clauses in employment agreements. Although tax-exempt hospitals largely fall outside the jurisdiction of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which will enforce the regulations, the newly issued final rule stands to affect clinical staffing. Non-compete agreements apply to between…
How a health system goes above and beyond in its price transparency efforts
By maintaining a patient-centric perspective, hospitals and health systems can find opportunities to look beyond regulatory requirements and incorporate top-class price transparency models, according to a recent online discussion. “We want to, first and foremost, empower and equip our customers to make informed decisions about their healthcare services and really shop for the best value,”…
CMS calls for hospitals to be subject to a new bundled payment model and data-reporting requirements
Notable policies in Medicare’s FY25 proposed rule for inpatient hospital care and long-term care hospitals include the formation of a mandatory bundled payment model and requirements for hospital data reporting. Although the proposed payment rate was the headlining aspect of the rule for hospitals, the policy developments could have a longer-term impact on segments of…
The Medicaid unwinding continues to pose issues one year in, but healthcare coverage appears stable
The unwinding of Medicaid continuous-enrollment requirements reached the one-year mark this month amid mixed measures of the effect on overall coverage. In one sense, the impact has exceeded all projections. Since states could begin disenrolling Medicaid beneficiaries on April 1, 2023, coverage for more than 19.6 million beneficiaries had been terminated as of April 4,…
Hospital advocates bemoan the small Medicare payment increase proposed for FY25
The payment increase described in Medicare’s FY25 proposed rule for acute care and long-term care hospitals falls well short of what hospitals need to keep up with costs, advocates say. The payment rate would rise by 2.6% for hospitals that fulfill quality-reporting requirements and meet the criteria to be designated as meaningful users of electronic…
Insurers see reasons for concern as CMS keeps the Medicare Advantage purse strings tight for 2025
Medicare Advantage (MA) faces the prospect of constrained revenue and payments for participating stakeholders after CMS finalized what amounts to a small decrease in the 2025 payment rate. Average revenue for MA plans is projected to increase by 3.7%, or more than $16 billion — but that’s primarily because of a prospective increase in the…
News Briefs: Providers face trying times in the first month after the Change Healthcare cyberattack
Healthcare providers struggled financially and operationally in the first 30 days after a Feb. 21 cyberattack forced the shutdown of Change Healthcare’s claims submission and payment systems, among more than 100 other applications. As of the week of March 18, parent company UnitedHealth Group had restored Change Healthcare’s payment platform and was reporting progress in…
Hospital finances are on the upswing, but the toll of the Change Healthcare outage is yet to be seen
Note: The second section of this article was updated where noted with a new comment from Fitch Ratings. There is reason to be optimistic about the state of hospital finances, but the impact of the Change Healthcare cyberattack has added uncertainty to the forecasts. Financial metrics for the first two months of 2024 continued to…
The FY24 HHS budget covers key programs for rural hospitals while tightening spending in some areas
The newly passed budget covering HHS during the remainder of FY24 contains notable provisions for healthcare providers. The roughly $117 billion departmental budget for the next six months was set in an appropriations bill that was passed by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden within hours of the March 22 expiration of funding for…