UCLA Health announced Tuesday that 1,242 patients are being notified about the theft of a faculty member's laptop computer containing names, medical record numbers and health information used to prepare patient treatment plans. According to UCLA, no Social Security numbers, health plan ID numbers, credit card numbers or other financial data were stored on the stolen laptop, which was password protected and was reported stolen on July 3. UCLA Health officials said they immediately initiated an analysis of a backup disk made available by the faculty member -- whose name was not released -- to determine whether protected health or other restricted information was stored on the laptop and, if so, who was affected.
On July 1, 2015, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced proposed changes to the controversial Two-Midnight Rule. This payment rule clarifies the circumstances under which Medicare will consider a given hospital stay to be an inpatient service (and therefore reimbursable at a higher rate under Medicare Part A), versus an outpatient service (and therefore reimbursable at a lower rate under Part B). Before the rule, physicians generally were allowed to exercise professional judgment regarding the appropriate treatment setting, subject to Medicare's retrospective medical review. The Two-Midnight Rule largely replaced medical judgment with regulatory benchmarks for inpatient versus outpatient admissions.
A patent law change sought by the pharmaceutical industry could cost federal health-care programs $1.3 billion over a decade by delaying new generic medicines, an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office found this summer, according to people familiar with the matter. Pharmaceutical trade groups are asking Congress to exempt drug patents from being challenged through an administrative process that is cheaper and faster than the federal courts. The procedure has become popular with generic-drug companies looking to sell copies of brand-name products. [Subscription Required]
A popular middle-class tax benefit could become one of the first casualties of the Affordable Care Act's so-called Cadillac tax, affecting millions of voters. Flexible spending accounts, which allow people to save their own money tax free for everything from doctor co-pays to eyeglasses, may vanish in coming years as companies scramble to avoid the law's 40 percent levy on pricey health care benefits. "They'll be one of the first things to go," said Rich Stover, a health care actuary and principal at Buck Consultants, an employee benefits consulting firm. "It's a death knell for them. If the Cadillac tax doesn't change, FSAs will go away very quickly."
Legislation overturning the Affordable Care Act's expansion of the small-group insurance market is likely to get a look this fall, according to multiple sources on and off Capitol Hill, and it may be the Obamacare "fix" with the best chance of becoming law. All the usual caveats apply: Republicans would have to convince the rank-and-file to accept a smaller-scale change to the law while waiting for full repeal. Democrats must be willing to agree to any change at all. Nothing involving Obamacare comes easy.
The Obama administration is asking New Jersey to pay back $32 million in Medicare payments that didn't comply with federal law. The improper billing was detailed on Monday in a report by the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services. In a random sample of 100 personal care claims, investigators found concerns with 17 of those claims. Those issues ranged from lack of documentation, lack of nursing assessment and no plan of care, according to the report. The sample was a small fraction of the 18 million detailed claims submitted that period by 266 personal care agencies in New Jersey.