CMS Proposes Changes to Physician Payments Sunshine Act Implementing Regulations – On July 3, 2014, CMS released four proposed changes for comment to the implementing regulations for the Physician Payments Sunshine Act. These changes would amend the final rule CMS published in February 2013, and were officially published in the Federal Register on Friday, July 11, 2014, within a Proposed Rule devoted predominantly to proposed changes to the Medicare physician fee schedule for calendar year 2015. The King & Spalding Client Alert on this subject is available here.
Report Finds No Correlation Between Increased EHR Use and Medicare Payment for Services – A report by the University of Michigan and Harvard School of Public Health found no correlation between use of electronic health records (EHRs) and increased Medicare claims payment. Researchers examined payment data of 393 hospitals that had deployed EHRs as well as claims data from 782 similar hospitals that had not, and found that the average Medicare payment per discharge was roughly equal between the two groups of providers. The time period under review included years during which eligible providers began receiving payments under the Medicare EHR Incentive Program. The report was published in the journal Health Affairs, and is available here (subscription required).