a news release<\/a> announcing the pilot\u2019s launch this month, the processing changes will accelerate Medicare Advantage payment timelines by 50%, from less than 30 days to less than 15 days, on average, over the next six months.<\/p>\n\u201cRural hospitals are the backbone of their communities,\u201d Bobby Hunter, CEO of UnitedHealthcare Government Programs, said in the release.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy speeding up payments to these critical facilities, we\u2019re helping providers focus on what matters most: patient care. Our goal is to co-create solutions with rural providers that support accessible care close to home. Together, we will learn quickly and scale what works,\u201d UnitedHealthcare said.<\/p>\n
Hospital advocates say changes to health care payments are needed to keep hospitals open.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t make a viable system or any business plan that works moving forward in a sustainable fashion if you\u2019re not getting paid for what you do,\u201d current president and CEO Danne Howard told AL.com in October.<\/p>\n
The pilot is currently active in Oklahoma, Idaho, Minnesota and Missouri, but is headed to Alabama in the future, Hemsley told Sewell.<\/p>\n
He did not specify a date.<\/p>\n
Alabama\u2019s health care systems also are under pressure from rising health insurance premiums and a shortage of doctors<\/a> in many specialties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A pilot program aimed at speeding up Medicare payouts for rural hospitals may be headed to Alabama soon,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253],"class_list":{"0":"post-429823","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-health-care","10":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}