June 2018

Our e-newsletter for Enterprise Risk Management, Claim Settlement and Healthcare Solutions.

• CMS Proposes Systems Changes For Security and Cost Reduction

  Recently, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed changes to their systems to provide better access to hospital price information and patient security. The proposed rule will update Medicare payment policies and rates under the Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) and the Long-Term Care Hospital (LTCH) Prospective Payment System (PPS).  Read more >>

  More Risk, Claim and Healthcare News …

• Third-Party Risk Management. A partnership between the risk management, procurement and internal audit teams can help keep an organization out of the risk hot seat. View article...

• U.S. Adults Take Medicine That Can Cause Depression. More than one-third of American adults take medications that have the potential to cause depression, a U.S. study suggests.  These include drugs for birth control, heartburn, allergies, pain and high blood pressure.  As of 2015, about 38 percent of adults took one medicine with depression as a known side effect, up from about 35 percent a decade earlier, researchers report in JAMA. Over that same period, the proportion of U.S. adults taking at least three drugs linked to depression rose to almost 10 percent from about seven percent.  View article...

• U.S. Medicare Reserves May Last Until 2026. The U.S. government’s healthcare program for the elderly will exhaust its reserves for hospital insurance in 2026, three years earlier than last year’s forecast, the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees said in a report on Tuesday.  The report also said the costs of the U.S. Social Security program will exceed incoming revenues this year for the first time since 1982, bringing closer the distant date when its trust fund will run out of money.  View article...

• New KFF Resource Tracks Proposed 2019 Marketplace Premiums By State.  The Kaiser Family Foundation today launched a tracker to monitor preliminary 2019 premiums in the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces as insurers file rate information with state regulators.  Beginning with data from eight states (Maine, Maryland, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington) plus the District of Columbia, the tracker shows preliminary premium information in nine major cities for the lowest-cost bronze plan and “benchmark” silver plan, which is used to determine the size of the premium tax credits available to low- and moderate-income enrollees.  View article… 

• Walk Briskly to a Longer Life.   You might want to pick up the pace when you head out for a stroll, suggests a new study that found that doing so may lengthen your life.  In fact, compared with a slow pace, walking at an average pace appeared to reduce the risk of dying early 20 percent, while a faster pace seemed to cut the risk by 24 percent, the researchers said.  View article...   

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