More than three months after ObamaCare's launch, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is developing a system to track enrollees who have made premium payments. The CMS would be able to track premium payments through the "834 form" generated on the back end of the system and transmitted from HealthCare.gov to the insurers when someone selects a plan online. A CMS official told The Hill some issuers were already providing these "effectuated 834 transaction forms," which will eventually be "the mechanism for making payment and reporting enrollment data as part of our automated system."
The last thing anyone wants to deal with after a serious illness or injury is a mountain of debt and repeated calls from bill collectors. Yet that's the scenario in which many patients find themselves. Patients can avoid some of those headaches and minimize the risk they'll need to file for bankruptcy protection. To do that, they must discuss costs and payment options early on with their hospital or medical provider, and be sure that they have tapped into any available discounts and financial assistance. But new standards, coming from government and the hospital and bill collection industries, should make resolving disputes and paying bills easier and fairer for patients, experts say.
Problems with a new computer system are leaving thousands of recent nursing graduates in the lurch. California's new BreEZe online licensing and enforcement system, managed by the Department of Consumer Affairs in Sacramento, was intended to improve efficiency for 37 licensing boards and bureaus. But since the state's Board of Registered Nursing and nine other agencies started using the software Oct. 8, applications for graduating nurses have spent weeks in limbo. Approximately 4,000 were pending as of Tuesday, according to Russ Heimerich, a spokesman for the Department of Consumer Affairs. "Our BreEZe computer system is not doing everything it was designed to do yet," he said.
The Washington State Hospital Association, representing 98 hospitals around the state, has sued the state over new rules that add state scrutiny of hospital affiliations and mergers to a law that previously allowed the state to review only hospital "sales, purchase or lease" arrangements. The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Thurston County Superior Court, asks the court to invalidate the recently adopted Certificate of Need (CON) rules, and asserts that the new rules don't have a basis in the law. "We know the new rules go too far because the Department of Health has consistently said the law doesn't apply to mergers or affiliations," said hospital association President and CEO Scott Bond.
Two US senators want to give health IT software developers an easier path to consumers by turning the Food and Drug Administration's guidelines into a statute and moving oversight of these apps over to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The move would protect jobs, cut regulatory burdens, and allow the FDA to focus its limited resources on technologies and devices that need the department's scrutiny, the lawmakers say. Under the Preventing Regulatory Overreach To Enhance Care Technology (PROTECT) Act of 2014, the FDA would no longer oversee "low risk health-IT" solutions such as electronic health records, scheduling software, and fitness apps, according to sponsors Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) and Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.).
In a move expected to save three struggling Brooklyn hospitals, the Obama administration has finally agreed to let the state reinvest $8 billion in Medicaid savings into its health care system, Gov. Cuomo said Thursday. Cuomo has repeatedly warned that without the approval, Brookdale Hospital, Interfaith Medical Center and Wyckoff Heights Medical Center would soon shut down. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told Cuomo Thursday that the feds are ready to sign off on the request. The $8 billion is $2 billion less than the state had sought, but it's enough to help remake the health care system, Cuomo said.