HEALTH e-NEWS+

The Ohio Hospital Association (OHA) welcomes Berger Health System as its most recent, active participant in the Staffing Program operated by OHA Solutions, a subsidiary designed to offer hospitals a variety of resources, including the management of a temporary staffing vendors and an on-line job board, www.OHHealthJobs.com.

Ohio hospitals, like other hospitals across the country, are challenged with health care workforce shortages. To help alleviate the mismatch between supply and demand for staff, hospitals may turn to supplemental staffing vendors to fill temporary vacancies.

OHA Solutions’ staffing vendors are contracted and audited to confirm they maintain the proper insurance liability coverage and staff credential requirements. All OHA member hospitals are entitled to post their needs for clerical staff, environmental services workers, pharmacists, radiology & imaging techs, and respiratory, speech, occupational and physical therapists and more.

Learn more about how OHA Solutions online or contact Nancy Melcher-Webb to discuss the appropriate level of supplemental staffing at your hospital.  (nwebb@ohanet.org or 614-384-9172)

The Department of Health & Human Services today released revised federal poverty income guidelines for 2012. The guidelines are widely used to judge eligibility for state and federal programs that support low-income and uninsured individuals and generally go into effect on the date of publication in the Federal Register. For Ohio's HCAP-related hospital free care program, base family income on the new guidelines for services and admissions on and after Jan 26. (Charles Cataline) 

2012 Federal Poverty Income Guidelines

 Add $3,960 for each additional family member.

U.S. Department of Education and the Health Science Education (HSE) Division of ACTE are working to identify judges and sponsors for The Ohio Health Occupations Students of America (HOSA) Career-Technical Organization 2012 Leadership Conference scheduled for March 22-23 at the Tolles Career and Technical Center in Plain City, Ohio (7877 US Highway 42 South).  The two-day conference supports leadership development and skill competition for approximately 600 health science students from across the state of Ohio competing for a spot at the National HOSA Leadership Conference this summer.  All competitions will be held on March 22^nd from approximately 4:00 – 7:30 pm. 

HOSA is a national student organization endorsed by the U.S. Department of Education and the Health Science Education (HSE) Division of ACTE. HOSA's mission is to promote career opportunities in the health care industry and to enhance the delivery of quality health care to all people. HOSA is 100% health care related and provides a unique program of leadership development, motivation, and recognition exclusively for secondary, postsecondary, adult, and collegiate students enrolled in HSE programs. With annual state-wide growth of HOSA Chapters, industry partnership to support state and national leadership activities is a necessity. 

The Ohio HOSA informational material, judge’s flyer and sponsor's flyer are available for your reference. For additional information please contact Nichole Oocumma.

The Ohio Hospital Association (OHA) has released a Review and Analysis of Medicare Value-Based Purchasing (VBP), a federally mandated program in the health care reform act. With VBP on the horizon, hospitals may increase their Medicare reimbursement with improvement in their quality and patient satisfaction scores.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 required the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to establish a hospital VBP program under which incentive payments are made to hospitals that meet certain performance standards. Hospitals that target quality improvement resources on specific measures can improve both quality and payment.

Using measures reported under the Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting (IQR) Program, the VBP program will redistribute inpatient fee-for-service (FFS) payments between hospitals based on quality performance beginning Oct. 1, 2012, which is the start of FFY 2013. CMS will establish one overall VBP quality score for each participating hospital using data in two quality domains: clinical process of care, and patients’ experience of care. To learn more about these quality domains and the components of VBP, download OHA's Review and Analysis here.

The Ohio Hospital Association’s Fiscal Policy department and Quality Institute staff regularly provide members with analyses of the financial impact of VBP as well as tools to improve payment to Ohio hospitals for their performance on quality measures.

OHA has also developed hospital-specific reports which provide a first look at the potential impact of the 2013 program, based on the rules established by CMS and currently available data. Updated quarterly using data from the CMS Hospital Compare Web site, these reports are available to OHA members at no extra cost by contacting Berna Bell.

More Ohio hospitals are saving money by working with OHA’s Unemployment Compensation Program to process unemployment claims. With several new contracts signed recently, the program in December saved hospitals almost $1 million. The savings are calculated on the basis of an average savings of just over $10,000 per disallowed claim. In December, OHA processed over 400 new claims for unemployment compensation and determined that 181 should be contested. Of those, 96 have been disallowed, which will save the hospitals an estimated $960,000 for the 26 weeks that unemployment compensation would have been collected if not challenged. Ten of the contested claims were allowed and 75 are still pending. For more information about OHA’s program, contact Brenda Slagle.

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has released the seventh of 11 short video and audio presentations for health care providers on top health care compliance topics.

As part of the newest step in OIG's Provider Compliance Training initiative, these free videos and audio podcasts-averaging about four minutes each-cover major health care fraud and abuse laws, the basics of health care compliance programs, and what to do when a compliance issue arises.

Today’s video, “Tips for Implementing an Effective Compliance Program,” is posted on the OIG Web site where the remaining videos will continue to be released at the beginning of each week. This video and audio podcast describes six steps to implement and operate an effective compliance program in a health care entity including culture of compliance, useful policies, appropriate training, effective communication, corrective action plans, and regular risk-based auditing.

View the PCT videos and an introductory video by the Inspector General, and listen to the podcasts here.

OIG tweets about these videos and audio podcasts using the hashtag #OIGcompliance, which Twitter users are encouraged to include when tweeting about the presentations: http://go.usa.gov/5n6. (Charles Cataline)