Blog

Blogs from AHA leaders and members on the latest health care issues.

This week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a Vital Signs report identifying the threats associated with antibiotic resistance (AR) and recommending “early and aggressive action” to prevent resistant pathogens from spreading in health care facilities.
Axios Vitals recent story on hospitals’ Medicare margins seemed to cherry pick data from a March Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) report to Congress to imply that hospitals “lose money” on Medicare because they are allegedly inefficient.
The second year of the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) required by the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) began on Jan. 1. Yet last month, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) voted to recommend that Congress repeal the MIPS and replace it with a new “…
How do you fully recover from a Category 5 storm? And plan for the next one? Those are the questions Puerto Rico’s hospital leaders continue to ask five months after Hurricane Maria’s 155-miles-per hour winds left the island’s health system on life support. 
Does receiving a penalty under Medicare’s Hospital-Acquired Condition (HAC) program really mean a hospital is a poor performer? An online article published February 16 in the Journal for Healthcare Quality by the AHA and KNG Health Consulting shows that getting a HAC penalty resembles a game of…
The U.S. health care system is facing a prescription drug spending crisis fueled by staggering increases in recent years in the price of drugs.
The hearing today by the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations on the impact of health care consolidation presented a one-sided perspective on the benefits of hospital mergers. The group presenting was untethered from the realities of managing a high-quality hospital system responsive to the…
A pair of seemingly disconnected directives issued in January to Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys handling civil False Claims Act (FCA) cases could mark a significant shift in the type and number of cases that the department and whistleblowers prosecute against hospitals, health care providers…
A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine on the 340B program includes a number of methodological flaws that invalidate the findings, including one major flaw: how the authors ignored a significant data source in drawing their conclusions.
Axios’ recent article on hospital audits conducted by CMS’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) is misleading and only tells one side of the story by leaving out key information that readers deserve to know.