{"id":174,"date":"2012-10-23T10:07:00","date_gmt":"2012-10-23T14:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=174"},"modified":"2012-10-23T10:07:00","modified_gmt":"2012-10-23T14:07:00","slug":"settlement-eases-rules-for-some-medicare-patients-nytimes-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=174","title":{"rendered":"Settlement Eases Rules for Some Medicare Patients &#8211; NYTimes.com"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/10\/23\/us\/politics\/settlement-eases-rules-for-some-medicare-patients.html?emc=tnt&amp;tntemail1=y&amp;_r=0\">Settlement Eases Rules for Some Medicare Patients &#8211; NYTimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p><i>This is pretty huge, actually!<\/i><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In a proposed settlement of a nationwide class-action lawsuit, the administration has agreed to scrap a decades-old practice that required many beneficiaries to show a likelihood of medical or functional improvement before Medicare would pay for skilled nursing and therapy services.        <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>Under the agreement, which amounts to a significant change in Medicare coverage rules, Medicare will pay for such services if they are needed to \u201cmaintain the patient\u2019s current condition or prevent or slow further deterioration,\u201d regardless of whether the patient\u2019s condition is expected to improve.        <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>Federal officials agreed to rewrite the Medicare manual to make clear that Medicare coverage of nursing and therapy services \u201cdoes not turn on the presence or absence of an individual\u2019s potential for improvement,\u201d but is based on the beneficiary\u2019s need for skilled care. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Settlement Eases Rules for Some Medicare Patients &#8211; NYTimes.com This is pretty huge, actually! In a proposed settlement of a nationwide class-action lawsuit, the administration has agreed to scrap a &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=174\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Settlement Eases Rules for Some Medicare Patients &#8211; NYTimes.com&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-medicare"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}