News

Matthew Stanley, D.O., vice president, behavioral health clinical service line, Avera Health (South Dakota) is the 2023 chair of AHA’s Committee on Behavioral Health.

In a study reported yesterday in JAMA Internal Medicine, children and adolescents previously diagnosed with multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C) reported no serious complications after COVID-19 vaccination.

U.S. hospitals and health systems continued to experience negative operating margins through November 2022, Kaufman Hall reported.

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response Friday deployed a 14-member National Disaster Medical System team to the University of New Mexico Children’s Hospital to help support staff caring for a surge in pediatric respiratory illnesses, such as flu and Respiratory Syncytial Virus.

A recent Wall Street Journal article on hospital divestitures and closures “fails to acknowledge the critical roles that low government reimbursement, population shifts and old infrastructure play” when nonprofit health care systems make access decisions, AHA President and CEO Rick Pollack writes in a letter to the editor published yesterday.

AHA today thanked the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission for recommending a 2024 draft payment update of market basket plus 1% for hospital inpatient and outpatient prospective payment systems, but continued to recommend a market basket plus 2.8% update for inpatient and outpatient PPS hospitals and 2.7% update for long-term care hospitals, saying hospitals and health systems face unprecedented financial pressures due to inflation and almost two decades of negative Medicare margins.

The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights yesterday announced a proposed rule with changes to the process for handling conscience complaints, while adding safeguards to protect against conscience and religious discrimination.

President Biden late Thursday signed into law the $1.7 trillion omnibus bill that will keep the government funded through September 2023.

Starting Jan. 1, 2023, Medicare will pay for Medicare-enrolled Rural Emergency Hospitals to deliver emergency hospital, observation and other services to Medicare patients on an outpatient basis.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Dec. 27 issued an FAQ document on good faith estimates for uninsured (or self-pay) individuals under the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021.