For two years, we have been reporting that the giant collection agencies that won government contracts to recover Medicare overpayments were entirely focused on lucrative bounties available when they audit hospitals and large physician practices. That may be changing. Our periodic search for the word “home” on the web sites of the four collection agencies acting as Recovery Audit Contractors (RAC) got a hit for the first time last week. In this article: we post the web sites of all four RACs
we identify each RAC’s covered states
we reprint the three newly approved audit issues that mention home care.
Recovery Audit Contractors are revealing early signs that they may soon take an interest in home care. What can we learn from the way they have been treating hospitals? A new survey indicates we can learn a lot. Nearly three quarters of hospitals believe the RAC program does reduce fraud and errors. At the same time, 60% of them find the audit process unfair. Most significant, nearly one quarter of them have had to hire additional staff to handle auditor documentation demands and short timelines.
Can health coaching delivered over a smart phone application help people with Type 2 diabetes control their blood sugar any better than traditional treatment methods? The University of Maryland School of Medicine has published a promising answer to that question, after following 163 patients for a year.
Three quarters of U.S. residents living in areas designated as rural are in the South and Midwest. In remote rural areas there are fewer physicians but more hospital beds per 100,000 people than in cities. Chronic conditions are more prevalent in rural communities and in urban and suburban areas. Telemedicine and telehealth have the potential to transform aspects of rural health care, improving accessibility, quality and affordability.
These are a few of the findings presented in a working paper from UnitedHealth Center for Health Reform & Modernization, which you can download in its entirety for free. This article summarizes more findings and conclusions like these.
