Health Care Law Blog
On April 30, 2015, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”) issued a proposed rule that would update fiscal year (“FY”) 2016 Medicare payment rates and the wage index for hospices serving Medicare beneficiaries (the “Proposed Rule”). CMS estimates that the Proposed Rule would result in a 1.3 percent ($200 million) increase in hospice payments for FY 2016. The highlights of the Proposed Rule are summarized below.
The DHHS Health Resources and Services Administration (“HRSA”) has finally published the new National Practitioner Data Bank (“NPDB”) Guidebook. The original Guidebook had not been updated since September 2001.
The updated April 2015 NPDB Guidebook is available here.
The new Guidebook extensively covers the changes resulting from the 2013 merger of the NPDB and the Healthcare Integrity and Protection Data Bank (“HIPDB”). The HIPDB was a separate data bank that received and disclosed reports of final adverse actions by federal and state agencies and health plans against practitioners, entities, providers, and suppliers. After the merger, there were significant changes in the entities eligible to query and report, as well as the individuals and entities subject to reports.
