The Remington Report

2012 kicks-off rapid changes to health care reform. Please share this with your management and staff.

1. Accountable Care Organizations In Medicare
Allows providers organized as accountable care organizations (ACOs) that voluntarily meet quality thresholds to share in the cost savings they achieve for the Medicare program.

2. Reduced Medicare Payments for Hospital Readmissions
Reduces Medicare payments that would otherwise be made to hospitals to account for excess (preventable) hospital readmissions.

3. Medicare Advantage Plan Payments
Reduces rebates paid to Medicare Advantage plans and provides bonus payments to high-quality plans.

4. Medicare Independence at Home Demonstration
Creates the Independence at Home demonstration program to provide high-need Medicare beneficiaries with primary care services in their home.

5. Medicare Provider Payment Changes
Adds a productivity adjustment to the market basket update for certain providers, resulting in lower rates than otherwise would have been paid.

6. Fraud and Abuse Prevention
Establishes procedures for screening, oversight, and reporting for providers and suppliers that participate in Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP; requires additional entities to register under Medicare.

7. Medicaid Payment Demonstration Projects
Creates new demonstration projects in Medicaid for up to eight states to pay bundled payments for episodes of care that include hospitalizations and to allow pediatric medical providers organized as accountable care organizations to share in cost-savings.

8. Data Collection to Reduce Health Care Disparities
Requires enhanced collection and reporting of data on race, ethnicity, sex, Primary language, disability status, and for underserved rural and frontier populations.

9. Medicare Value-Based Purchasing
Establishes a hospital value-based purchasing program in Medicare to pay Hospitals based on performance on quality measures and requires plans to be developed to implement value-based purchasing programs for skilled nursing facilities, home health agencies, and ambulatory surgical centers.

For more health care reform news: http://remingtonreport.com/component/content/section/26?layout=blog.