The federal policy response to the Change Healthcare cyberattack
Note: This information is excerpted from HFMA’s running coverage of the cyberattack that disabled operations at Change Healthcare. On March 10, HHS and the Department of Labor sent a letter encouraging commercial payers to do their part to help financially strained providers nearly three weeks after the cyberattack on Change Healthcare. “Larger payers in particular…
Healthcare Blame Game: Patient Rights Advocate claims its report gets ‘independent review and validation’ – but does it?
Headline: The Sixth Annual Hospital Price Transparency Compliance ReportSource: Patient Rights AdvocatePublished: February 2024 PatientRightsAdvocate.org recently issued its sixth report scoring hospital compliance with federal price transparency regulations, and for the sixth time, its assessment conflicts with CMS’s assessment. I want to focus on a nugget we picked up on in the methodology section of the latest report,…
Responses to a new RFI will help guide regulations addressing consolidation and private equity in healthcare
The Biden administration is ramping up its assessment of how to regulate consolidation and private equity (PE) acquisitions in healthcare, issuing a request for information (RFI) from stakeholders. There is a deadline of May 6 to submit comments on the RFI, which was distributed by HHS, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade…
Healthcare Financial Management Association calls Patient Rights Advocate’s latest price transparency compliance report ‘irresponsible’
CHICAGO (March 7, 2024) – Long an advocate for consumerism and price transparency in healthcare, the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) today called the latest report from Patient Rights Advocate (PRA) “irresponsible” and “incorrect.” HFMA has maintained that to be effective, price transparency must offer clear information that is readily accessible to patients to enable them to…
Federal funding legislation would address Medicaid DSH cuts, physician payments and more
March 8 update The Senate passed the appropriations bill by a 75-22 vote, getting it to the White House for President Joe Biden to sign hours before funding for some federal departments would have expired and a big cut to Medicaid disproportionate share hospital payments would have begun. Attention now turns to HHS and other…
How HFMA worked with members through the Change Healthcare cybersecurity breach
Change Healthcare, a healthcare technology company owned by UnitedHealth Group, disclosed on Feb. 21 that it had fallen victim to a cyberattack, causing disruptions to several of its systems and services. According to a statement released on its website on Feb. 22, around noon EST, UnitedHealth Group confirmed the incident, stating, “At this time, we…
Continued 340B eligibility is at risk for hundreds of hospitals thanks to pandemic-related factors
Hospitals that rely on savings from the 340B Drug Pricing Program should examine the possibility that they will soon be rendered ineligible. Several factors are having an industrywide impact on the disproportionate share hospital adjustment percentage, and if that tally drops below a certain threshold on a hospital’s Medicare cost report, the hospital cannot receive…
Cyberattack on Change Healthcare brings turmoil to healthcare operations nationwide
This blog presents HFMA’s running coverage of the Change Healthcare cyberattack and its impact on providers and the healthcare industry. June 21 updates Change Healthcare (CHC) has announced the start of breach notifications related to the cyberattack that potentially exposed protected health information (PHI) and personally identifiable information (PII) for tens of millions of Americans.…
New rule on Medicaid DSH payments will impose stricter limits on many hospitals
Numerous hospitals that receive Medicaid disproportionate share hospital (DSH) payments face a tighter cap on their payment amounts after the Feb. 23 publication of a CMS final rule. The regulations were spawned by 2020 year-end legislation that made changes to the DSH hospital-specific limit (HSL), including with respect to how third-party payments factor into the…
New data shows providers continuing to win most No Surprises Act independent dispute resolution cases
Providers won a large majority of disputes initiated during the first half of 2023 through the No Surprises Act’s arbitration portal for adjudicating out-of-network payments, according to newly published data. HHS and the U.S. Departments of Labor and Treasury released public-use files (available to download here under “2023 Reporting Year”) showing the outcome of every…