Healthcare E-Alerts Blog posts

Sometimes we buy on time. That may call for making a few installment payments. Our reporting on the highlights of the 2024 Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) final rule seems to be working out in similar fashion, i.e., in installments. In this third installment on Medicare’s final rule for the outpatient hospital setting, our focus […]

In a follow-up to our previous alert, we would like to provide our readers with additional takeaways from the 2024 Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) final rule, that was published earlier this month by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Based on a fact sheet provided by CMS that summarizes the key provisions […]

It’s that time of year again. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has been busy, putting out several new rules in just the last few days, including the 2024 Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) final rule. In addition to the voluminous OPPS rule, CMS also published a fact sheet that summarizes the major […]

It wasn’t an out-and-out lie, really. You just failed to mention a few details; that’s all! This may be representative of the internal dialog taking place within the heads of more than a few hospital managers these days as they attempt to rationalize a reporting “oversight” on their part. On the one hand, hospitals are […]

It’s true: we live in a litigious society. That’s not necessarily an indictment against those who initiate a legal action. It may be that they feel forced into taking such extreme measures because of the inappropriate and detrimental behavior of others. Regardless of which party is at fault, one thing remains certain: the lawyers are […]

As we reported last week, health system giant Kaiser Permanente (KP) was faced with more than a few unhappy campers over the last month. A coalition of unions organized a three-day work stoppage in several states designed to signal employee dissatisfaction with wages, benefits and working conditions at various KP facilities. The multi-state joint demonstration […]

We’ve seen this before, but not to this scale. A hospital in New York sees a couple hundred of its nurses go on strike. A similar work stoppage occurs in a Michigan facility; and another healthcare-related walkout is reported down in Texas. These 2023 job actions are seen by many as nothing more than random, […]

It must seem strange to many that there is a variance in what is deemed to be the start of a new year depending on whether you’re talking about the normative “calendar year” or the governmental fiscal year. It’s just a bit cumbersome to have two different yearly reboots. However, we must point out that […]

We’re on a roll—like a runaway freight train. This is the third alert in a row that we are bringing on the topic of hospital price transparency. Though, at this point, it may seem like an obsession on our part, it’s really more of a reflection of how much the transparency issue has been in […]

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would have been quite pleased with the story coming out of a respected medical publication this month. It was as if his own creation—the character we all know as Sherlock Holmes—had cracked his latest case in the usual spectacular fashion. Undercover operatives, corporate intrigue and the circumvention of federal law—what more […]