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The nucleus of Amazon’s effort to upend the health-care market may very well be the Echo device in your living room. According to an internal document obtained by CNBC, Amazon has built a team within its Alexa voice-assistant division called “health & wellness,” which includes over a dozen people and is being led by Rachel Jiang, who has spent the last 5 years at Amazon in various roles including advertising and video.
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The nucleus of Amazon’s effort to upend the health-care market may very well be the Echo device in your living room. According to an internal document obtained by CNBC, Amazon has built a team within its Alexa voice-assistant division called “health & wellness,” which includes over a dozen people and is being led by Rachel Jiang, who has spent the last 5 years at Amazon in various roles including advertising and video.
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Programs for All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) organizations were given much-needed operational clarity on Tuesday, as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) finally announced a new rule to update and modernize program requirements.
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The Medicare Advantage (MA) expansions that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced this year and in early 2018 open the door to creative applications of non-medical home care services designed to proactively improve individuals’ health.
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By Tim Rogers. Since the start of the 116th Congress, reducing prescription drug-pricing has been a focal point for many lawmakers on Capitol Hill–and rightfully so. Legislative initiatives that strive to lower the cost of care should be applauded. Yet as many policymakers and the wider public continue to focus on lowering the high costs of drugs, it’s easy to let other health care access issues fly under the radar. Case in point, a recently proposed reform to the Medicare program’s home health benefit that threatens the health care needs of millions of vulnerable seniors across the country.
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As currently structured, the Patient-Driven Groupings Model (PDGM) will completely change how and when home health providers deliver therapy services. It will do so in multiple ways, most notably by eliminating the use of therapy service thresholds as a factor in payment determinations. It’s a move the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) has long recommended.
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The home care industry’s biggest problem – turnover – is only getting worse. Already cited as the No. 1 challenge plaguing home care agencies across the country, the median caregiver turnover rate skyrocketed to 82% in 2018, according to this year’s Home Care Benchmarking Study by market research and education firm Home Care Pulse.
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The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced Friday that the agency has finalized a set of policies designed to expand the use of telehealth benefits under the Medicare Advantage program. Originally proposed in October 2018 for the 2020 plan year, the new policies from CMS are meant to expand access to telehealth services by giving Medicare Advantage (MA) plans more flexibility to cover them in the home setting. Traditionally, CMS has largely restricted telehealth reimbursement to clinical settings in rural areas, apart from certain expectations in Alaska and Hawaii.
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Home care providers slow to chase Medicare Advantage business opportunities may now be motivated to speed up their pursuits. Last week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced it was broadening the range of supplemental benefits Medicare Advantage (MA) plans can offer in 2020. Starting next year, health care policymakers will allow MA plans to cover any benefits that “have a reasonable expectation of improving or maintaining the health or overall function” of beneficiaries with chronic conditions.
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ne of the most anxiously awaited aspects of the Patient-Driven Groupings Model (PDGM) is the elimination of therapy visit volume as a determining factor in calculating reimbursements. Despite reassurance from industry leaders that PDGM isn’t a ‘death knell’ for therapy services, therapy-heavy agencies will have to become more cost effective to ensure they don’t take a hit when the new payment model takes effect.
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