Privately insured patients have been asked to rate their medical providers for years. Now, for the first time, Massachusetts is seeking the opinions of thousands of Medicaid recipients about their experiences in the doctor’s office.
Beginning this month, nearly 250,000 low-income and disabled patients will be asked questions such as whether they or their children were able to get appointments when they needed them, whether doctors and office staff communicated respectfully, and whether their mental health treatment actually improved their ability to work or attend school.
Seema Verma, the nominee to lead the CMS, said during her confirmation hearing Thursday that she may claw back parts of a rule that overhauled managed Medicaid programs. She also opposes turning Medicare into a voucher program and thinks rural providers shouldn't face risk in alternative payment models.
Advocates for primary care were in Albany this week making the case that Governor Andrew Cuomo is cutting Medicaid reimbursements at the same time the state is trying to emphasize its importance.
Senate Republicans matched their House counterparts Wednesday by releasing a budget blueprint that eliminates deficit spending in a decade and repeals the Affordable Care Act.
But the Senate's plan doesn't fully embrace controversial House proposals to overhaul Medicare and Medicaid. Instead, the Senate offers less detailed prescriptions for how it would go about culling costs from the healthcare coverage programs for the poor and elderly.
A temporary Medicaid pay raise that was part of President Barack Obama’s health law made it easier for poor adults to get appointments with primary care doctors, according to a study published Wednesday.
Paying more to doctors who participate in the federal-state insurance program for the poor usually improves access for patients, but the law’s two-year limit on the raise, its slow rollout and other regulatory problems made many skeptical about how physicians would react to the extra money — which in many states equated to a 50 percent pay hike or more.
Imagine a scenario in which Exxon Mobil recommends to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) how much carbon dioxide that oil and gas companies should be allowed to emit -- and the EPA approves those recommendations 90 percent of the time. We all know that industry often has outsized influence over the regulatory process, but having 90 percent of its recommendations rubber-stamped would be outrageous.
The CMS for the first time publicly released individual performance data for Medicare accountable care organizations on 33 measures of healthcare quality.
The results for 220 of the participants (PDF) in the Medicare Shared Savings Program reveal how ACOs performed on measures (PDF) of patient experience and preventive care and disease management for some of the leading causes of death among U.S. elderly, including heart disease, cancer and diabetes.
