Outlaw outliers would be under gun in new rule. (Hospital Outlier Rule).

Publication: Medicine & Health

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COPYRIGHT 2003 Eli Research, Inc.

To head off a scam that has allowed Tenet Healthcare and other hospitals to gain financial windfalls from classifying many cases as high-cost "outliers" under the Medicare inpatient prospective payment system, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is attempting to close some loopholes.

Medicare has no access to current hospital cost data but must use information in a facility's so-called Medicare cost reports settled in previous years to extrapolate from current charges what an individual case actually...

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