CAHHS hosts 90-minute monthly virtual networking sessions for California hospital members. Held the second Thursday of the month, these Zoom sessions will provide an opportunity to connect and network with professionals, peers, and other volunteer leaders. Discuss your current challenges, topics of interest, and share resources.
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California’s nine-month legislative session will take its summer recess in mid-July and rev back up in mid-August for what will be a frenetic final four weeks to send bills to the Governor’s desk. CHA has been tracking hundreds of health care-related bills, and actively working on dozens on behalf of hospitals and health systems.
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The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued the attached final rule implementing the Physician Quality Payment program as required by the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA). In response to comments from CHA and other stakeholders, CMS has finalized a number of changes that increase flexibility for the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) and for qualifying for incentive payments through participation in advanced alternative payment models (APMs).
Among the changes finalized, CMS has codified its previous announcement that physicians will be able to pick their own pace under MIPS for the 2017 transition year. Specifically, CMS will allow MIPS-eligible clinicians to avoid a negative payment adjustment by submitting a minimum amount of data (for example, one quality measure or one improvement measure). CMS has also finalized an option of a continuous 90-day MIPS reporting period that would allow clinicians to receive a neutral or modest payment increase, depending on performance. Clinicians who choose to report for more than 90 days up to a full year would be eligible for moderate positive payment adjustments.
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What’s happening: At the Office of Health Care Affordability’s (OHCA) Oct. 14 board meeting in Sacramento, board members expressed interest in moving swiftly on adopting a regional hospital sector spending target, at least in Monterey County, which OHCA announced will also be the subject of an investigative hospital market competition study.
What else to know: The board welcomed its newest member and approved the state’s first primary care investment benchmark.
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This post has been archived and contains information that may be out of date.On Dec. 17, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a final rule with comment period. The rule implements legislative changes to Medicare payments to teaching hospitals contained in the Consolidated Appropriations Act (CAA) and addresses organ acquisition payment policies through changes, clarifications, and codifications relative to organ procurement organizations (OPOs), transplant hospitals, and […]
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On Tuesday, as expected, the bill to create California’s Office of Health Care Affordability unanimously passed out of the Assembly Health Committee, with a couple legislators choosing not to vote.
The bill, which has the power to fundamentally change how health care in California is delivered, saw minimal debate — just a few brief questions from committee members — before it advanced to the next stage of the legislative process.
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The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) has responded to the recent spread of novel coronavirus in China — and news of the first U.S. cases this week — by establishing web site updates for consumers and health care providers, holding a call with health care providers on Jan. 23, and issuing All Facilities Letter (AFL) 20-09, which details recommendations for health care facilities along with the latest clinical information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
With the state Office of Health Care Affordability (OHCA) barreling toward singling out hospitals for even lower spending growth targets than the statewide goal — and federal legislators debating budget proposals that would decimate Medicaid and Medicare funding — CHA has developed two opportunities for hospitals to prepare for engagement on both of these critical issues.
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The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued the proposed rule for the home health prospective payment system (PPS) for calendar year (CY) 2024.
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It’s easy to be distracted by the news coming out of Washington, D.C., these days, much of which has little to do with sound policies that advance hospitals’ efforts to care for their patients. But on the issue of Medicaid disproportionate share hospital (DSH) payments, we cannot afford to lose focus in our fight against devastating funding cuts to hospitals that serve the uninsured and underinsured.
This issue tops our current federal advocacy priorities because it is time sensitive: the DSH cuts were scheduled to take effect on Oct. 1 but were briefly delayed by the current temporary spending bill. When that measure expires on Nov. 21, unless the cuts are eliminated or further delayed, they will take effect immediately.
Now is the time for a full-court press urging Congress to continue this vital source of funding for safety-net hospitals.
Medicaid DSH cuts were adopted as part of the Affordable Care Act, on the assumption that the number of uninsured Americans would decrease more than it has. In California, 2.9 million people remain without health insurance. Those patients are disproportionately served by our safety-net hospitals, which rely heavily on DSH payments to offset the cost of the uncompensated care they provide.
As planned, the cuts will be unsustainable for California’s safety-net hospitals, reducing DSH allotments in the state by $500 million in 2020 and by about $950 million a year from 2021 through 2025.
So far, members of Congress have been willing to delay these drastic reductions while millions remain without coverage, but the time has come to once again impress upon Congress the essential nature of DSH payments to safety-net hospitals and their patients. To that end, CHA is leading an effort to press the California congressional delegation to sign a letter that urges House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to support eliminating the cuts for another two years.
Next week, we’ll be sending an Advocacy Alert to member hospitals, asking you to contact your representative about signing the letter. This is an issue that all hospitals should care about — because cuts of this magnitude will jeopardize access to care for millions.
For lawmakers to support a policy that diminishes access to care for California’s most vulnerable patients is unacceptable. It is incumbent upon all of us to let them know that.
— Carmela