| CATHETER FRAUD TARGETED — A surge in spending on catheters has prompted the Biden administration to propose a rule Friday that would help protect providers from Medicare fraud, POLITICO’s Robert King reports. The rule addresses fraudulent spending that providers say unfairly impacts their bottom lines and inflates their patients’ health care costs. How we got here: Accountable care organizations — groups of doctors, hospitals and other providers who agree to accept Medicare payment based on the quality of care provided and the savings generated — reported a sudden and suspicious increase in catheters in 2023. In April, HHS’ inspector general said scammers were contacting Medicare enrollees offering free services to get their enrollment information, then billing Medicare for catheters. The National Association of ACOs trade group reported catheter spending increased from $153 million in 2021 to $3.1 billion last year, according to a report in The Washington Post. What the rule does: This proposal would allow CMS to exclude payments for two specific urinary catheter codes when it calculates the ACO’s financial performance for 2023. FDA: PASTEURIZED MILK IS SAFE — Commonly used pasteurization techniques — where raw milk is heated to a certain temperature — inactivates bird flu virus in dairy products, according to a study released by the FDA and the Department of Agriculture on Friday. Why it matters: An ongoing outbreak of avian flu in cattle herds across the country has led to concerns about dairy products after fragments of the virus were found in commercial milk in April. It comes after federal officials in May sampled nearly 300 samples of commercial dairy products and found them all to be negative for viable virus — meaning virus that can infect. For the pasteurization study — which has yet to be peer-reviewed — federal officials obtained 275 raw milk samples from multiple farms in four states with infected herds. More than half were found to be positive for virus fragments, and of those, 39 had infectious virus. Researchers warmed milk with infectious virus to temperatures used commonly for pasteurization in a number of repeated experiments and found that pasteurization inactivated the virus. “Collectively, these studies provide strong assurances that the commercial milk supply is safe,” the FDA said in a statement, adding that it continues to urge against consuming raw milk. CYBERSECURITY THREAT RETURNS — HHS is again warning the health care sector about vulnerabilities in a file transfer system that was also breached last year, exposing tens of millions of health records. HHS’ Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center has warned of a “critical vulnerability” in MOVEit, a file transfer platform used in the health care system, and urged health care organizations to make patching any vulnerabilities they find in MOVEit a high priority. “This vulnerability exposes healthcare organizations to cyberattacks, especially ransomware and data breaches,” an HHS alert said last week. The same platform was targeted by foreign hackers in a sweeping attack last summer, which led to health records being stolen from some health care systems. Why it matters: Health care breaches, particularly hacks and ransomware attacks, have skyrocketed in recent years. Federal officials have warned that foreign hackers are specifically targeting the health care sector. “The identified critical vulnerabilities in MOVEit are another stark example of how hospitals and health systems are exposed to significant cyber risk through insecure third-party technology and service providers,” John Riggi, the American Hospital Association’s national adviser for cybersecurity and risk, said in a statement.
| 
No comments:
Post a Comment