Amazon, the largest e-commerce company in the world, has made large, strategic moves over the past several years to make a place for themselves in healthcare. This article will review Amazon’s most recent advancements in the industry, including those related to Amazon’s voice-controlled personal assistant, Alexa, and Amazon’s employee healthcare system, Amazon Care, and how this non-healthcare company is changing the industry. (Read more...)

On March 11, 2021, President Joe Biden signed into law the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA). The law looks to alleviate the burden felt by the millions of people who lost their employer-sponsored health insurance over the first six months of the pandemic and assist the hardest-hit communities through the extension of the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act (ACA) and Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) subsidies, expanding Medicaid coverage, increasing funding for behavioral health, ramping up COVID-19 vaccines and testing, providing financial relief for rural providers, and enacting other individual and healthcare system protections. (Read more...)

A new RAND Corporation study on bundled payments in the private sector was published in the March 2021 issue of Health Affairs. The study analyzed data from over 2,000 procedures performed as part of a direct payment program by Carrum Health between 2016 and 2020, and found significant savings from this bundled payment program, without any significant changes in quality. This study adds important evidence to the argument in favor of bundled payments and is especially important because it examines the under-studied area of bundled payment models from commercial payment systems. (Read more...) 

This article is the second installment in a four-part series on valuation considerations for ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) and office-based laboratories (OBLs), and the differences between these outpatient facilities. The first article in this series introduced the ASC and OBL industry, including reimbursement distinctions and the reasons behind the rapid growth of both enterprises over the past few decades. (Read more...) 
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This one-hour webinar provides legal and valuation perspectives on the finalized changes to the Stark Law and the Anti-Kickback Statute. Specific issues covered include:

  • The changes to the “big three” requirements – Fair Market Value, Commercial Reasonableness, and the Volume or Value Standard;
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  • Other new and modified exceptions and safe harbors included in the final rules.