Orlando Health’s New Hospital-in-the-Home Program Brings Quality Healthcare to Patients in the Comfort of their Homes

New federal funds likely to spark additional growth in hospital-at-home programs across the US while creating need for clinical laboratories to serve these homebound patients In one of the latest examples of health systems’ providing acute care to patients outside of traditional hospital settings, Orlando Health announced its launch of the Orlando Health Hospital Care at Home program serving central Florida. Clinical laboratory testing is included in the program, which is currently being...

Study Comparing Data from Hospitals and Insurers Finds Major Hospitals Still Not Complying with Price Transparency Law

But insurers are complying under the Transparency in Coverage regulations and that is where discrepancies in the disclosure of prices to the public have been found Despite federal regulations requiring hospitals to publicly post their prices in advance of patient services, some large health systems still do not follow the law. That’s according to a new Transparency in Coverage Report from PatientRightsAdvocate.org (PRA), which found that some hospitals are “flouting” the federal Hospital Price...

CMS Pauses Plans to Limit Public Knowledge of Medical and Surgical Harm at Hospitals During COVID-19 Pandemic

Healthcare industry watchdog Group Leapfrog says that if CMS suppresses the data “all of us will be in the dark on which hospitals put us most at risk” For some time, hospitals and clinical laboratories have struggled with transparency regulation when it comes to patient outcomes, test prices, and costs. So, it is perplexing that while that Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) pushes for more transparency in the cost of hospital care and quality, the federal agency also sought to...

Despite the Coronavirus Pandemic, Medicare Officials Continue Push for Price Transparency by Pressuring Hospitals to Disclose Rates Negotiated with Private Payers

Clinical laboratories are advised to continue developing methods for making prices for procedures available to the general public Even as an effective treatment for COVID-19 continues to elude federal healthcare agencies, Medicare officials are pressing ahead with efforts to bring about transparency in hospital healthcare pricing, including clinical laboratory procedures and prescription drugs costs. In FY 2021 Proposed Rule CMS-1735-P, titled, “Medicare Program; Hospital Inpatient Prospective...

Independent Clinical Laboratories in Maryland May Need to Step-up Outreach with Hospitals as New CMS Program Launches Jan. 1

Clinical laboratory leaders will want to pay close attention to a significant development in Maryland. The state’s All-Payer Medicare program—the nation’s only all-payer hospital rate regulation system—is broadening in scope to include outpatient services starting Jan. 1. The expanded program could impact independent medical laboratories, according to the Maryland Hospital Association (MHA), which told Dark Daily that those labs may see hospitals reaching out to them. The Centers for Medicare...
;