News

The Department of Health and Human Services Aug. 11 declared a public health emergency in Hawaii due to the recent wildfires and waived certain Medicare, Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program requirements to give health care providers greater flexibility to meet emergency health needs.

A new report by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ Consumer Representatives calls for regulatory oversight to ensure insurers comply with the Affordable Care Act requirement to cover certain preventive services without cost-sharing.

Vaccines are powerful weapons against most diseases. Nearly a dozen serious diseases —including polio, smallpox and whooping cough — have been eradicated because of vaccines. That’s important to remember as we observe National Immunization Awareness Month in August.

The Association for Health Care Resource & Materials Management, AHA’s membership group for health care supply chain professionals, has developed a web hub in partnership with experts from the public and private sector to help the health care field learn about and address the risk of forced labor in their supply chains.

Back to school means back to healthy habits, and AHA’s August digital toolkit reminds the public of how COVID-19 vaccines should be part of families’ plans this year.

While declining 8.4% for people under age 25 and 6.1% for American Indian and Alaska Native people, total U.S. suicide deaths continued to increase in 2022 to an estimated 49,449, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported yesterday. The 2.6% increase follows a roughly 5% increase in 2021.

The Health Resources and Services Administration yesterday awarded $64.8 million to programs to train advanced practice nurses to provide primary care, mental health care and maternal care; $8.7 million to programs to train licensed practical nurses to become registered nurses; and $26.5 million for programs to provide and cancel loans for students who become nurse faculty.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services today released a FAQ explaining how it will handle the administrative fee for out-of-network providers and group health plans that initiate payment disputes under the No Surprises Act’s independent dispute resolution process on or after Aug. 3, when a federal judge vacated nationwide a six-fold increase in the fee.

Trends in health insurance coverage are driving an increase in medical debt: these include inadequate enrollment in comprehensive health care coverage and high-deductible and skinny health plans that intentionally push more costs onto patients.

A new video highlights AHA’s work with Congress and policymakers this year to help the nation’s hospitals and health systems stabilize their finances, strengthen their workforce and secure their ability to serve their communities.

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Climate Change and Health Equity and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released a mapping tool that tracks emergency medical service responses to people experiencing heat-related emergencies to help communities prioritize heat mitigation strategies.  

U.S. hospital emergency departments have improved many aspects of pediatric readiness since 2013, based on responses by over 3,600 EDs to a 2021 assessment by the National Pediatric Readiness Project, JAMA Network Open reports

Commenting on proposed Internal Revenue Service regulations to implement Inflation Reduction Act clean energy and energy efficiency incentives, AHA said it generally supports the regulations permitting certain taxpayers to elect a direct cash payment in lieu of credits but recommends changes to make them more useful to members and beneficial to the environment. 

AHA recently voiced support for four bipartisan bills introduced in the Senate to help alleviate the nation’s chronic and growing drug shortages. 

Health care providers must comply with the HIPAA rules with respect to telehealth effective Aug. 9 at 11:59 p.m., when the 90-day enforcement discretion period announced in April expires.

In this podcast, three leaders from rural health care systems agree that every community must find its own unique way to maximize new partnerships and affiliations while maintaining the best possible care for patients.

In a letter to the editor published by Modern Healthcare, AHA President and CEO Rick Pollack responds to a recent report on hospital consolidation from Elevance Health — the large, for-profit commercial insurer formerly known as Anthem that dominates many insurer markets and earned nearly $2 billion in net profit in the second quarter of this year alone.

AHA Aug. 9 called the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ $957 million cut to Medicare Disproportionate Share Hospitals for fiscal year 2024 “simply unacceptable,” citing the agency’s “remarkable lack of transparency” in how the inpatient prospective payment system final rule calculates the uninsured rate and its impact on DSH payments.

The Association for Health Care Resource & Materials Management, an AHA professional membership group for health care supply chain professionals, presented its George R. Gossett Leadership Award to Dee Donatelli, senior director at symplr Spend, at its annual conference in Orlando, Fla.

“Health insurance should be a bridge to medical care, not a barrier. Yet too many commercial health insurance policies often delay, disrupt and deny medically necessary care to patients,” writes AHA President and CEO Rick Pollack in an op-ed today in U.S. News & World Report.