Economic Trends | Regulatory Environment | Skilled Nursing
By: Liz Liberman | August 03, 2016
Managed care is an all-encompassing term that covers a variety of methods to pay for healthcare outside the norm of fee-for-service. Medicare Advantage (MA) plans are a form of managed care, as are Managed Medicaid plans. Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) also fall under this umbrella. With the exception of MA, managed care is a relatively new idea in terms of health care financing. Generally, with managed care, payments flow through a risk-bearing third-party company to health care providers. The third party’s goal is to manage a patient’s total cost of care so that the total payment made by the third party is smaller than the initial bill. How this system is regulated is still evolving; CMS is committed to moving away from traditional fee-for-service payments, and managed care has a role to play in attaining that goal.
Economic Trends | Regulatory Environment | Skilled Nursing
By: Liz Liberman | July 27, 2016
All Medicare-certified skilled nursing facilities are subject to the Five-Star Quality Rating System and Nursing Home Compare, which were established, implemented, and maintained by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS). Both programs use metrics to judge the quality of skilled nursing properties. Nursing Home Compare is a website where consumers can gather information about quality metrics for every eligible skilled nursing property to use for comparison shopping. Most of the quality metrics displayed on Nursing Home Compare are used as part of the input to establish a skilled nursing property’s Five-Star rating, with five-star facilities considered the highest quality.
Economic Trends | Regulatory Environment | Skilled Nursing
By: Bill Kauffman | July 06, 2016
NIC released its Skilled Nursing Data Report on June 21, 2016. This is the second release of the report and includes key monthly data points from October 2011 through March 2016. In this week’s blog post, we’ll take a closer look at the release and provide a detailed analysis.
Economic Trends | Regulatory Environment | Skilled Nursing
By: Liz Liberman | June 29, 2016
By Liz Liberman, Health Care Analyst, NIC The population of younger nursing home residents is on the rise, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. This population includes young adults with disabilities and adults between the ages of 65 and 74. In fact, the latter population has grown from 13% of all nursing home residents in 2000 to 14.9% in 2013, the McPherson Sentinel reports. This rise is mostly due to the increase in short-term stay residents. The American Health Care Association estimates that 22% of nursing home residents need short-term care, which covers stays under 100 days.
