Tim Ebel’s visit with an ear, nose and throat specialist at an Ohio clinic last October came to $348. At the same time, he got a second bill for $645. The hospital system that owns the Avon, Ohio, clinic had charged him separately for use of the office where he met his physician. It is […]
As if to prove that every rule has an exception, the usually dysfunctional Republican-majority House of Representatives has at least one sensible piece of bipartisan legislation on its record: In December it passed a health-care measure called the Lower Costs, More Transparency Act on a 320-71 vote. Also contrary to Congress’s occasional practice, the bill’s name […]
Hospital acquisition of physician practices has become a dominant trend in American medicine. The FTC and the DOJ recently issued guidelines that could strengthen their approach to vertical integration in health care. Click here to see the full article.
Dive Brief: Hospitals are up in arms over a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives that would equalize payments for drugs administered in outpatient clinics, regardless of ownership. The American Hospital Association and the Federation of American Hospitals sent separate letters to Congress this week urging legislators to vote against the bill over the […]
Hospitals are urging lawmakers to remove site-neutral pay for drug administration provisions — and make changes to provisions that codify hospital price transparency requirements and 340B reporting requirements — in the Lower Costs, More Transparency Act, which is set to come up for a House vote the week of Dec. 11, but the Alliance for […]
One of the best ways to reduce health care costs would be to move towards “site-neutral” payments and away from the current system’s inefficient payments based on site-of-care. Encouragingly, recent legislation covering the issue appears to be gaining traction in Congress. There are at least ten different proposed bills in varied stages of the legislative […]
Each year millions of patients visit their doctors’ offices for a variety of routine services. But in recent years more Americans are being charged as if they had visited a hospital. This is because the doctor’s office billing them is pretending to be a hospital. When a hospital bills a patient’s insurer, it must report […]
Did you know that the exact same procedure can be more expensive depending on where you have it done? Most people know that if they receive care in their doctor’s office or go to a lab or imaging center, rather than the hospital, they won’t be charged as much. But when a doctor’s office or […]
Congress is currently considering policies that would expand site-neutral payment for ambulatory services in the Medicare program. These policies would reduce hospital revenues, while generating savings for Medicare beneficiaries and the federal government and removing an incentive to shift services out of physician offices and into hospitals. Some policymakers have suggested using a portion of […]
Inside Health Policy, May 17, 2023 House Energy & Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) ultimately pulled a Medicare site-neutral pay expansion amendment from consideration during the health subcommittee’s Wednesday (May 17) markup of wide-ranging health legislation, saying the committee had more work to do on the policies — but she implored hospitals to work […]