What’s happening: The Hospital Quality Institute (HQI) has released a new analysis identifying five patient safety areas that continue to recover after being derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
What else to know: HQI’s analysis found that workforce challenges like turnover and burnout contributed greatly to a rise in these incidents. Prior to the pandemic, there had been steady improvement.
What’s happening: House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) have formed a new bipartisan task force focused on artificial intelligence.
What else to know: Several of the task force members are actively involved in health care policy.
As early as next month, California’s Office of Health Care Affordability could set a statewide spending target (the current staff proposal is at 3%) for the state’s entire health care sector. Staff have proposed setting this target for the next five years, even though state law only requires that the initial, non-enforceable target for 2025 be set at this time.
What’s happening: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released publicly available independent dispute resolution (IDR) reports for the first two quarters of reporting year 2023.
What else to know: The report includes certain data submitted by disputing parties and certified IDR entities to the No Surprises Act (NSA) federal IDR portal.
What’s happening: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services finalized changes to how states calculate the hospital-specific cap for Medicaid disproportionate share hospitals (DSH).
What else to know: The rule is effective April 23.
What’s happening: CHA has updated its federal quality measures matrix to reflect the 2024 federal fiscal year and calendar year Medicare prospective payment system final rules.
What else to know: The matrix includes quality measures required for public reporting and performance-based programs for hospitals and post-acute care providers.
What’s happening: The AHA’s Institute for Diversity and Health Equity is asking hospitals and health systems to participate in a biennial survey that provides a snapshot of successes and challenges in diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
What else to know: Hospitals should have received a link to the survey on Jan. 31 from this AHA email address: surveysupport@aha.org. The survey will be open until March 29.
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What’s happening: CHA is hosting a complimentary, members-only webinar on Feb. 27 at 10 a.m. (PT) to highlight the American Hospital Association Vitality Payer Scorecard, which was recently endorsed by the CHA board.
What else to know: The scorecard captures necessary and normalized data points without sharing protected health information. The automated process is based on de-identified claims and remittance files and eliminates the need for CHA surveys on this issue.
What’s happening: To help CHA members learn about new behavioral health facilities being constructed in communities around the state, CHA has created an online document that displays the funds awarded to build various types of facilities by county.
What else to know: Close to $2 billion in state funds have been distributed throughout California during the past two years to build new behavioral health treatment locations that will serve Medi-Cal beneficiaries.
What’s happening: Congress has until March 8 to negotiate a potential health care package that could include Medicare site-neutral payment cuts, which are also being considered in several other bills.
What else to know: CHA opposes the cuts and continues to inform the California congressional delegation of the proposals’ harmful impacts.