The Supreme Court upheld President Obama’s health care overhaul, holding that it is constitutional in substantially all respects. The ruling further confirms that major changes are coming as a result of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Tax Credits Reconciliation Act of 2010 . The acts have tax and penalty implications for both individuals and businesses.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has made some very restrictive interpretations of what costs are eligible for electronic health records (EHR) incentive payments for critical access hospitals (CAHs). These interpretations could seriously limit CAH options for obtaining, financing and paying for a viable EHR system and limit the incentive payments Medicare will pay. The problems revolve around the language in Section 1814(l)(3)(C) of the Social Security Act .
On August 1, 2011, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) published the final rule for changes to the hospital acute care prospective payment system (PPS) for federal fiscal year (FY) 2012. As was discussed in a prior BKD article on this topic, CMS included several changes affecting the hospital wage index computation for FY 2013