News Brief: Occupancy at five-year high for psychiatric hospitals
News Brief: Occupancy at five-year high for psychiatric hospitals
Access to psychiatric and addictions services may be a growing challenge, according to a report from the National Association of Psychiatric Health Systems.
Psychiatric hospital occupancy increased 11% between 1999 and 2000, reaching its highest level in five years, the report says. Occupancy grew from an average of 62.3% in 1999 to 69.2%. Over the past five years, occupancy rates have increased 24.4%, the report adds. Outpatient admissions increased from 1,390 in 1999 to 2,435 in 2000, and outpatient visits were up from 20,332 in 1999 to 22,755 in 2000.
The trend holds for child, adolescent, adult, older adult, and drug/alcohol programs. Average length of stay for all age groups was 10 days in 2000, nearly the same as 1999, but that figure was down 57% since 1991.
More information about the report is available at www.naphs.org.
News Brief: Lab payment edits apparently working
Claims processing edits to the CMS Common Working File (CWF) designed to detect and prevent payment of certain unauthorized laboratory tests appear to work well, according to a recent inspection report from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG).
Overall, less than 1% of the labs in the OIG’s sample eluded the edits and were paid for services not authorized, the report says. Based on that sample, the OIG estimates that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services correctly processed 998 out of every 1,000 lab services billed to Medicare.
However, the report indicated that certain CMS policies allow incorrect payment vulnerabilities to exist still. The OIG recommends that CMS shorten the length of time allowed between application and onsite survey of new labs and prohibit labs from billing Medicare until they have paid all of their Clinical Laboratory Improvement Act (CLIA) fees or been surveyed to ensure compliance with CLIA regulations.
The OIG also recommends that CMS downgrade CLIA certificates and transmit the information to the CWF as soon as it is known that a lab will no longer do moderate- or high-complexity testing. CMS concurred with the OIG recommendations.
Subscribe Now for Access
You have reached your article limit for the month. We hope you found our articles both enjoyable and insightful. For information on new subscriptions, product trials, alternative billing arrangements or group and site discounts please call 800-688-2421. We look forward to having you as a long-term member of the Relias Media community.