Medicare Home Health: Payments to Most Freestanding Home Health Agencies Peace Sign Bead bracelet than Covered Their Costs, a 27 February 2004 report from the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO), finds that Medicare payment margins for home health agencies rose from 16.2 percent in 2001 to 17.8 percent in 2002. Payments were adequate collectively for rural providers and urban agencies. More than four-fifths of freestanding agencies had positive Medicare margins, two-thirds had margins of more than 10 percent, and more than 20 percent had margins of 30 percent or more. Home health agencies with negative margins had higher per visit costs than did those that were profitable. The agencies with negative margins spent more than twice as much on overhead and 40 percent more on direct patient care than those with positive margins spent. They also treated patients with slightly less intensive health care needs than those with positive margins treated. The report expressed concern about die Return to Tiffany Bead Bracelet of casemix adjusters, which could result in underpayment in some cases and overpayment in others.
Medicare Payment Policy: Report To Congress, a 28 February 2004 report from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), summarizes current developments in health care quality, payment adequacy, and access. The report finds that the quality of care Medicare beneficiaries receive depends on the indicators used in measurement. While hospital mortality is improving, beneficiaries still are experiencing adverse events in the hospital. Gaps in preventive care have resulted in unnecessary hospitalizations, and optimum care is not always delivered to Return to Tiffany Heart Lock Cuff. Still, beneficiaries give their providers high ratings. Meanwhile, MedPAC finds that Medicare hospital payments are adequate, based on beneficiary access, volume of services, access to capital, quality, and the relationship to costs and payments. The report raises concerns, however, about a drop in over-all Medicare margins, as well as future trends in cost growth and Medicare payments. Physician payments need to be updated to account for a projected change in input prices, with a downward adjustment for productivity growth. Payments are adequate for skillednursing facilities, home health agencies, outpatient dialysis centers, and ambulatory surgical centers, MedPAC says. Finally, MedPAC recommends three changes to Medicare managed care payments: To ensure "financial neutrality," payments should continue to be Return to Tiffany Heart Tag Charm Set but should not offset the effects of risk adjustments on overall payments; beneficiaries with end-stage renal disease should be allowed to enroll; and a quality incentive payment policy should be established.
Roadmap to Recovery and Cure: Final Report of the NAMI Policy Research Institute Task Force on Serious Mental Illness Research, an 18 March 2004 report from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) Policy Research Institute, concludes that "dramatic improvements in patients' lives could be realized in the next ten years if research [were] expanded and the treatment system reformed and brought into closer alignment with research." New findings in genetic science, neuroscience, and molecular research already have Return to Tiffany Oval Tag Set major breakthroughs in recent years. The report says, however, brain illnesses still pose a large burden on society. Research on serious mental illness has been underfunded, compared with other chronic illnesses, and has not been a priority of the National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH); this has interfered with the expansion of recent findings and translation of the research into effective treatments. The report recommends sizable increases in NIMH basic, clinical, and health services research; continuation and expansion of clinical trials networks focused on severe mental illness; coordination of research, dissemination, and treatment system policy by the federal government; and increased support for training of researchers and providers.
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