QIOs news and information

A handful of healthcare associations and 47 state medical societies are exhorting the CMS to maintain a state-based structure for quality improvement organizations, rather than to permit contracts with QIOs that are regional or national in scope.
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Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) is making another attempt to undo provisions in a 2011 trade bill that would restructure the Medicare quality improvement organization program.
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A Medicare initiative aimed at smoothing transitions of care through community-based interventions successfully lowered 30-day readmission rates and all-cause hospitalization rates.
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Two members of the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee are urging HHS to maintain a state-based structure for Quality Improvement Organization contracts as the department begins to implement QIO provisions included in a trade bill last year.
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The CMS proposed a 2.1% payment rate increase to hospital outpatient departments and a 1.3% boost to ambulatory surgery centers for 2013.
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Healthcare quality advocates say Medicare's Quality Improvement Organization Program didn't get a fair deal in both the substance and process of the U.S. trade bill Congress approved last week.
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A trade bill now ready for the president's signature will threaten the effectiveness of the nation's quality improvement organizations, according to the group representing those entities.
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The nation's hospitals say they're disappointed with a coding adjustment the CMS made in the proposed rule on the inpatient prospective payment system that the agency released Tuesday.
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In a proposed rule issued late Tuesday afternoon, the CMS said it expects Medicare operating payments to acute-care hospitals for inpatient services in 2012 to decrease by about $498 million, or about 0.5%, compared with 2011, while its payments to long-term acute-care hospitals are projected to...
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The CMS is proposing that healthcare providers and suppliers give Medicare beneficiaries written notice about their right to contact a Medicare quality improvement organization with concerns about the quality of their care.
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