News Briefs: Medicare’s proposed FY24 update to inpatient payments falls short, hospitals say
Hospitals are less than pleased with Medicare’s proposed FY24 payment increase for inpatient care. In regulations released April 10, the net inpatient payment update is 2.8% after factoring in a mandatory productivity adjustment of -0.2 percentage points. As usual, the update would be reduced for any hospital that does not fulfill quality-reporting requirements or qualify…
5 issues that are keeping healthcare compliance professionals up at night
Rarely has the compliance landscape been more muddled or presented more of a challenge for healthcare organizations. “I’ve been a compliance officer for about 20 years now, and I’ve been in healthcare forever,” said Kirsten Wild, RN, a nurse by background who now owns a healthcare compliance consultancy. “But the volume and the pace of…
UASI names Nancy Koors as CEO
Nancy Koors, MBA, MS, recently became CEO of UASI. The company, based in Cincinnati, Ohio, provides revenue cycle management solutions including coding, clinical documentation integrity and healthcare information management, and consulting services. Koors is an experienced C-suite executive who has held leadership positions at startups and mid-market organizations in various industries. She joined UASI in…
Nebraska Chapter celebrates a legacy of leadership
HFMA members often refer to fellow members as family. The term captures the close bond that forms out of shared interests and experiences. Actual family and HFMA family were recently one and the same, however, when Virgil Guthrie, a former Nebraska Chapter president, watched his grandson Kyle Teel, FHFMA, CPA, assume the same office he…
Gail Wilensky: No Surprises Act — where things stand after 16 months
Few areas of concern within our nation’s healthcare system have caused patients, their families and caregivers more consternation than surprise medical bills. Most of the new protections under the 2020 No Surprises Act became effective on Jan. 1, 2022. Last August, the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Treasury released a statement providing…
Aaron Crane: It’s time to Ignite the Spark for meaningful price transparency
“U.S. healthcare gets a C- for price transparency” could easily be the next headline the industry sees. After all, just 70% of hospitals are in compliance with both aspects of the federal price transparency rule, a Health Affairs study found, even though the rule took effect two years ago. But dig deeper than this study…
Enterprisewide physician advisor programs are key to improving costs and revenue cycle performance
Making sure physicians understand the financial implications of how they document their care is critical to a health system’s financial sustainability.
Laurie Beyer: Routine rounding helps yield financial improvements
If you want to reach Laurie R. Beyer, MBA, CPA, executive vice president and CFO at GBMC HealthCare in Maryland, avoid any time between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. Tuesday through Friday. No matter what time of year it is, she will be unavailable to take your call during those times because she will be…
Joe Fifer: The courage to embrace change
During one of my first meetings with HFMA staff in 2012, I advised the assembled staffers that if they thought they’d be sitting next to the same people and doing the same things in a year’s time, they were probably mistaken. When I noticed people squirming in their seats, I hastened to add that I…
David Johnson: Academic medicine, where privilege compounds dysfunction
Academic medicine combines healthcare with higher education, the two U.S. economic sectors that have exhibited outsized cost growth over the past 50 years. The result is a stunning disconnection between academic medical center (AMC) business practices and the supply-demand dynamics reshaping healthcare delivery. Market, technological and regulatory forces are pushing the healthcare industry to deliver…