In a July 14 letter to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), America's Essential Hospitals responded to the agency's request for information on "Ensuring Lawful Regulation and Unleashing Innovation to Make American Healthy Again."
Building on existing administrative deregulatory initiatives, HHS asked for recommendations on regulations that should be eliminated to ease regulatory burden for providers and allow them to devote more time and resources to patient care.
The association urged HHS to:
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Improve Medicaid state directed payment administration by repealing separate payment terms and interim payments based on historic utilization
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Streamline and better align quality measures across programs, focusing on a targeted set of evidence-based measures that are clearly linked to improved health outcomes
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Review and revise obsolete, unnecessary, or burdensome provisions in conditions of participation and provide hospitals flexibility to shape their programs to most efficiently serve patients' needs
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Remove barriers to telehealth by eliminating the geographic and site-of-service restrictions on Medicare telehealth services
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Withdraw information blocking disincentives for health care providers
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Use Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services data to better automate and streamline the process for annual recertification of 340B Drug Pricing Program covered entities
Contact Director of Policy Rob Nelb, MPH, at rnelb@essentialhospitals.org or 202.585.0127 with questions.