You'll see a retroactive payment increase averaging between roughly 1% and 3% if you practice in one of more than 50 localities affected by a geographic price cost index (GPCIs) adjustment in the health care reform bill. The Patient Protection and Affordability Act (PPACA) retroactively restores the minimum work GPCI factor of 1.000 to the Medicare payment formula. The floor expired Jan. 1, so providers in 54 geographic areas experienced decreases in payment because their work GPCI dropped below 1.000.

The passage of historic, controversial health reform legislation and its costs have complicated the temporary payment fix you and your peers have come to expect from Congress every year, experts tell Part B News. The highly partisan debate over reform and its costs are largely responsible for just a one-month pay fix and the need for immediate action again to stave off the 21% cut mandated by the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula, a health care industry expert says.

Spend enough time in a physician office—either as an employee or a patient—and you’re going to encounter conflict and tension. 

Educate your patients about playing an active role in fighting medical identity theft, make your policies tougher, and take a proactive approach to minimize the increasing risk, experts say.

Booz Allen Hamilton, a McLean, VA–based firm that was commissioned in 2008 by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology to research medical identity theft in the United States, says all facilities can adopt the following strategies: 

The idea began as a joke. Mary Thomson, vice president of marketing and PR at Abington (PA) Memorial Hospital, was talking to a specialist about the difficulties of contacting referring physicians to thank them for sending new patients. “You should have your top five referrers as your fab five in your phone,” she laughed. Her quip then sparked an idea. 

The Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) program has caused a lot of apprehension in the provider community. In response, many providers have elected to develop RAC teams to assess the risk to their organization prior to the beginning of the program and to handle requests once the program is under way. However, if not done carefully, a RAC team can end up pulling resources from other needed areas of the hospital in a disproportionate level to the threat posed by RAC recoupments. A carefully designed RAC team can minimize the effect on the hospital from both RAC recoupments and inefficient use of resources, including valuable staff and physician time. 

The secret to high-deductible health plans (HDHP) and consumer-driven health plans (CDHP) seems simple enough: Collect the amount due while the patient is in your facility.

The massive, 2,400-page health care reform bill adopted over the weekend means new opportunities and challenges for your practice. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) passed the House of Representatives late Sunday night by a 219-212 vote. The White House says President Barack Obama is expected to sign PPACA into law on Tuesday (UPDATE: read our most recent coverage here).

Your practice will see lots of new opportunities from the massive, $1 trillion health care reform bill signed into law March 23, but you can expect to deal with new fraud mandates as well. The landmark legislation makes a number of changes to the Medicare program that will impact your practice over the next several years. 

Congress may miss another deadline, leading to a devastating 21% cut to Medicare reimbursements. The House of Representatives and Senate had not yet agreed on a bill delaying the sustainable growth rate (SGR) cut to your payments set for April 1 as Part B News went to press.