News Briefs
News Briefs
Resources available on taxes, weighty subjects
Matthew Bender & Co., a division of LEXIS Publishing, has released a comprehensive guide on the tax issues relating to hospitals and health care organizations, including HMOs. Taxation of Hospitals and Health Care Organizations was written by a leading expert in health care law and tax-related issues and provides insights on everything from achieving and maintaining tax-exempt status to surviving an IRS audit.
Chapters include: "Lobbying by Public Charities," "Electioneering by Hospital and Health Care Organizations," "Public Charity Status of Health Care Organizations," "General Rules for Unrelated Business Taxable Income," and "Acquiring, Operating, and Disposing of Debt-Financed Property." Cost is $185. For more information, or to order, call (800) 533-1637 or visit the Web site: www.lexis.com/bookstore and look for Publication No. 1183.
Curious as to how your hospital stacks up against the competition? Wondering which area nursing home provides better service? All this information is now available on Healthgrades.com, a self-described one-of-a-kind Internet site that provides report cards on hospitals, physicians, health plans, and other health care providers across the country based on a five-star scale. Report cards are issued on more than 400 health plans nationwide, 17,000 nursing homes, and more than 5,000 hospitals (ranked according to both procedure and diagnosis). Additionally, profiles are provided for more than 60,000 chiropractors, 21,000 assisted living residences, 300 fertility clinics, and more. A list of "leading" physicians is provided, as well as profiles on more than 600,000 doctors nationwide. For more information on the site and how it determines ratings, visit: www.healthgrades.com.
Medicare to last until 2023, says annual report
The Medicare trustees’ annual report projects the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund will be around until 2023 because health care costs are not rising as quickly as tax revenue. Surplus funds have accumulated, according to the report, in part because the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 reduced health care spending by 3%. These surpluses, while smaller, will continue to grow after the BBA expires in 2002 at which point the trustees have projected that annual spending growth will have risen to 6%. (The findings, based on intermediate spending estimates, show that assets will continue to grow until 2010.) Should Medicare inflation never rise above 3%, the trustees believe the fund may go on indefinitely. However, should spending increase by more than 4% in the near term, the report states that the fund will be exhausted by 2012.
Is HIPPA becoming an administrative hippo?
The Administrative Simplification Act, a part of the Health Insurance Portability and Accounta-bility Act, might make the Y2K fiasco look like a walk in the park. Final regulations, which began hitting early last month, call for the standardization and securing of the elements involved in electronic health care transmission. The elements include claims data and universal identifiers for providers and health plans, and will have to be supported by every business process of a health care organization if the plan is to be successful.
Hospital outpatient payments raised 4%
Beginning July 1, hospitals will receive a 4% increase in their outpatient payments thanks to the latest — and hopefully, final — ruling from the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) concerning the implementation of the Medicare Prospective Payment Service for outpatient care. Up until this announcement, hospitals had been expecting a drop in outpatient payments of 5.7% as dictated by the Balanced Budget Act of 1997.
Despite the increase, HCFA has said that some facilities may still experience a drop in overall payments. The percentage increase is not the only piece of good news for hospitals — the new regulations have been slimmed down a bit as well, with only seven broad ambulatory payment classifications (APC) rather than the 121 specific APCs that had been originally proposed. The regulations were published in the April 7 issue of the Federal Register.
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