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Saturday, December 1, 2012

Risk Adjustment Of Medicare

By Eliza Winters


In order to properly determine the number and amount of payments to be given to the beneficiaries of these plans, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid have developed the Medicare risk adjustment model. There are a number of people across the United States who are currently taking advantage of the Medicare Advantage plans offered through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services.

Risk adjustment is often used in the health insurance industry and has been used by the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid services for many years and is continually being developed and improved. Through this model the financial risk factor of each member is determined by looking at factors such as patient history, diagnostic data as well as age and current health status. The risk factor of each plan member is the number, or cost, that they are likely to incur over the time span of one year.

This means that from the data gathered through the information given to Medicare by private health insurance companies is the main source of determining how much payment these private plans should receive to cover their member's likely health care costs. One of the most important parts of a effective Medicare risk adjustment is being able to appropriately predict the care costs of a patient connected to a particular disease. Currently Medicare gets its information from the patient's health plan in the form of claims data as the method for defining the payment for risk adjustment.

Much of the errors that have taken place are centered around the problems of recording patient visits and activity as well as the sharing of information from provider, health insurer and Medicare. Since the main portion of Medicare risk adjustment is calculated based on claims reporting it puts a large importance on precise and careful reporting between the health care providers to the health insurance plan. When it comes to reporting patient health care and claims information, there are a number of areas that can be cause for calculation errors causing improper risk adjustment.

Many of the errors that occur commonly within this model are because of the reporting that occurs throughout patient interactions and doctor visits. Many different benefits will be able to be realized through the use of high quality and accurate claims reporting and risk adjustment. Also the amount of communication that happens between health care providers, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid as well as insurance companies is an important part as well.




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