Fight brewing over Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood, and other briefs

Modern Healthcare

  • A fight is brewing among some Republican-led states and the Obama administration over Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood, and advocates and providers say women's access to reproductive health services may suffer because of it. Officials in Alabama, Arkansas and Louisiana have said they intend to dissolve their Medicaid provider agreements with Planned Parenthood because of a series of videos released by the anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress. The CMS said in response to the actions that federal law prohibits states from restricting Medicaid beneficiaries from receiving care from a qualified provider. If those states don't heed the administration's concerns, they put themselves at risk of losing their federal Medicaid funding for family planning, legal experts say.

  • None of the losing bidders for the U.S. Defense Department's massive electronic health-record contract challenged the decision to award it to Leidos, Cerner Corp., Accenture and Henry Schein. The regular protest period ended last week, clearing the path for the winning team to move forward with EHR deployment for the military health system, which serves 9.5 million active duty and retired military personnel and their families. The new EHR system will be used in 55 hospitals and 600 clinics. There were six bidders on the contract, but only four disclosed their efforts.

  • It's not always clear which doctors have ownership interests in both physician-owned distributorships and the hospitals to which they sell devices, according to HHS' Office of Inspector General. The OIG found one doctor who had ownership interests in both a hospital and a distributorship that sold spinal devices to the hospital. The finding was part of an analysis of 12 physician-owned hospitals that reported buying spinal devices from physician-owned distributorships. But there could be more out there, according to the report. The investigators found that it wasn't always easy to find details about distributorship ownership. That lack of transparency raises concerns about HHS' ability to ensure that providers don't violate the anti-kickback statute, the Stark law governing physician self-referrals, patient safety and quality of care, the OIG said.
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