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In The News is a concise digest of health care news in Vermont and the nation. VMS is not responsible for the content of the articles.
VERMONT NEWS
VPR: Middlebury's Porter Medical Center Will Join The UVM Health Network
The members of Porter Medical Center voted Wednesday to affiliate with UVM Health Network. The Middlebury hospital will be re-branded as UVM Health Network–Porter Hospital. Porter Medical Center approved the necessary bylaw changes for the affiliation to begin in April. Dr. Fred Kniffin, Porter's CEO, says the affiliation will help stabilize the hospital’s financial situation. More »
VTDIGGER: Regulators set hearing on for-profit surgical center proposal
The Green Mountain Care Board has set a hearing date on the permit application to build a surgical center in Colchester that a group of independent doctors submitted nearly two years ago. The board, which acts essentially as judges in reviewing certificate of need applications for capital investments in the health care system, has scheduled the hearing for April 13. “I’m very excited that we now have a hearing date,” said Amy Cooper, executive director of HealthFirst, an organization for providers at physician-owned practices. The Green Mountain Surgical Center would cost $1.8 million to build. It would offer basic surgeries, such as knee repairs and hysterectomies, and other procedures such as colonoscopies and treatment for spinal pain. Cooper said the facility would compete with local hospitals, such as the University of Vermont Medical Center, but only to provide the most basic surgeries and procedures. More »
NATIONAL NEWS
BECKERS HOSPITAL REVIEW: AMA launches website urging civic action against AHCA
The American Medical Association is launching an effort aimed at getting the provider community involved in healthcare reform on the Hill. The physician association Monday rolled out an interactive website, pateintsbeforepolitics.org, which provides a way for clinicians and patients to contact Congress members via email, phone and social media. The website is also intended to be a resource for updated information on healthcare reform. The website appears to be a counteraction against the American Health Care Act legislation put forth by Republicans last week. The AMA publicly denounced the AHCA, largely because it would cause a significant drop in health insurance coverage. More »
KAISER HEALTH NEWS: Sticker shock forces thousands of cancer patients to skip drugs, skimp on treatment
John Krahne received alarming news from his doctor last December. His brain tumors were stable, but his lung tumors had grown noticeably larger. The doctor recommended a drug called Alecensa, which sells for more than $159,000 a year. Medicare would charge Krahne a $3,200 copay in December, then another $3,200 in January, as a new year of coverage kicked in. For the first time since being diagnosed 10 years ago, Krahne, now 65, decided to delay filling his prescription, hoping that his cancer wouldn’t take advantage of the lapse and wreak further havoc on his body. With new cancer drugs commonly priced at $100,000 a year or more, Krahne’s story is becoming increasingly common. One-third of Medicare patients who were expected to use Gleevec — a lifesaving leukemia medication that costs up to $146,000 a year — failed to fill prescriptions within six months of diagnosis, according to a December study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. More »
NY TIMES: Health bill would add 24 million uninsured but save $337 billion, report says
The House Republican plan to replace the Affordable Care Act would increase the number of people without health insurance by 24 million by 2026, while slicing $337 billion off federal budget deficits over that time, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Monday. The coverage numbers released Monday will make it only more difficult for Republicans to explain why their legislation would improve the country’s health care system. And that could make the bill’s fate in the more narrowly divided Senate much more tenuous. Average premiums for people buying insurance on their own would be 15 to 20 percent higher in 2018 and 2019 than they would be under current law, the budget office said. More »
NY TIMES: Health policy expert is confirmed as Medicare and Medicaid Administrator
The Senate on Monday confirmed Seema Verma, a health policy expert from Indiana, to lead efforts by the Trump administration to transform Medicaid and upend the Affordable Care Act. By a vote of 55 to 43, the Senate approved the nomination of Ms. Verma to be the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which spends more than $1 trillion a year on programs providing health care to more than one-third of all Americans. More »
FORBES: Medical residents can work 24 hours straight, accreditor says
A group that accredits medical residency programs is lifting caps on work hours of first-year doctors-in-training, saying young residents aren’t harming patient care by working 24 consecutive hours plus another four to transition their patients to another provider. The announcement Friday by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) makes final a set of revisions to residency professional standards. The new requirements take effect July 1 of this year. More »
KAISER HEALTH NEWS: By law, hospitals now must tell Medicare patients when care is ‘observation’ only
Under a new federal law, hospitals across the country must now alert Medicare patients when they are getting observation care and why they were not admitted — even if they stay in the hospital a few nights. For years, seniors often found out only when they got surprise bills for the services Medicare doesn’t cover for observation patients, including some drugs and expensive nursing home care. More »
STAT NEWS: Mayo Clinic: Privately insured patients to get priority over Medicaid, Medicare patients
Citing tighter profit margins, the chief executive of the Mayo Clinic recently told his employees that the prestigious health system will prioritize the care of privately insured patients over those on Medicare and Medicaid. That bold pronouncement by Dr. John Noseworthy — made in a speech to employees late last year — reflects the growing unease among hospital executives who are watching profits shrink due to steady increases in the number of government-insured patients. More »
MODERN HEALTHCARE: Docs left in the dark by CMS over MACRA compliance requirements
Doctors are potentially facing a loss of millions in Medicare reimbursement dollars due to lack of MACRA-related guidance from the CMS, according to a letter to the CMS from the Medical Group Management Association. In a final rule announced last year, the CMS said it would exempt physician practices with less than $30,000 in Medicare charges or fewer than 100 unique Medicare patients per year from complying with the Merit-based Incentive Payment System outlined under MACRA. The agency was supposed to formally notify these doctors in December of their exemptions. The threshold in the final rule would exclude 30% of physicians from complying with MIPS, according to an American Medical Association analysis. But three months into the first year of MACRA implementation, doctors have not received the notifications. That leaves them vulnerable if they do nothing; the CMS can later tell them they're on the hook for complying with the law. More »
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