lcalvobartolome/proxann_data huggingface dataset:
Topic: Health — General
Subject: Health
Date: 2014-06-04 00:00:00

Special Inspector General for Monitoring the ACA Act of 2014 or the SIGMA Act of 2014 - Establishes the Office of the Special Inspector General for Monitoring the Affordable Care Act to conduct, supervise, and coordinate audits and investigations of the implementation and administration of programs and activities established under, and payment system changes made by, the Affordable Care Act (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the health care provisions of the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010). Requires the Special Inspector General to be appointed by the President, with the advice and consent of the Senate.

Requires the Special Inspector General to appoint an Assistant Inspector General for Auditing and an Assistant Inspector General for Investigations.

Places the Special Inspector General under the supervision of the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), but prohibits federal agencies involved in implementing or administering the Affordable Care Act from preventing or prohibiting the Special Inspector General from initiating, carrying out, or completing any audit or investigation.
Topic: Health — General
Subject: Armed forces and national security
Date: 2014-06-12 00:00:00

Continuing Care for Veterans Act of 2014 - Prohibits the Secretary of Veterans Affairs (VA) from altering the health care available to a veteran who is enrolled in the VA health care system or the amount of time that veteran has to wait for an appointment for such care based solely on the length of time since he or she last received health care from the VA.
Topic: Health — General
Subject: Health
Date: 2014-07-10 00:00:00

Medicare Common Access Card Act of 2014 - Establishes a pilot program under title XVIII (Medicare) of the Social Security Act (SSA) in order to utilize smart card technology for Medicare beneficiary and provider identification cards.

Amends SSA title XI to extend through FY2029 funding for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation.
Topic: Health — General
Subject: Health
Date: 2014-07-30 00:00:00

Stopping Illegal Obamacare Subsidies Act - Prohibits American Health Benefit Exchanges from providing for automatic enrollment in health plans until the Inspector General (IG) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) verifies that each state exchange and the federal exchange established under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) have resolved the inconsistencies outlined in the June 14 IG report.

Directs the Secretary of HHS to make public the steps that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the federal exchange will take to clear any inconsistencies that arose on or before the enactment of this Act and to ensure that the systems used by the CMS to determine or assess eligibility for premium tax credits, cost-sharing reductions, Medicaid, and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) under title XXI of the Social Security Act can resolve such inconsistencies within 30 days after enactment of this Act.

Directs the Secretary to make public the methods that the CMS use to monitor, track, and measure the progress of the federal and state exchanges in resolving inconsistencies.

Suspends for plan year 2015 the availability of premium assistance tax credits and the reduced cost-sharing program under PPACA; and allows them to resume only after the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration declares affirmatively that all inconsistencies related to invalid Social Security numbers have been resolved, and the IG determines that this is so.

Directs the Secretary to request additional information from any applicant for a qualified health plan on a state or federal exchange whose information contains inconsistencies. Requires the applicant to: (1) be withdrawn from the premium assistance credit and reduced cost-sharing programs if the additional information is not provided within 90 days, and (2) re-enroll in a qualified health plan with appropriate and accurate information during the next open enrollment period.
Topic: Health — General
Subject: Health
Date: 2014-07-31 00:00:00

Amends title XVIII (Medicare) of the Social Security Act to: (1) create an exception to Medicare secondary payer requirements for certain workers' compensation settlement agreements, and (2) provide for the satisfaction of such requirements through use of qualified Medicare set-asides under such agreements.
Topic: Health — General
Subject: Health
Date: 2015-01-13 00:00:00

Better Efficiency and Administrative Simplification Act of 2015 

 Amends title XVIII (Medicare) of the Social Security Act to allow individuals the option to receive the Medicare Summary Notice (explanation of benefits) electronically.

Requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to: (1) apply a similar option to other Medicare statements and notifications, and (2) provide such Medicare Summary Notice and any other such statements and notifications on a more frequent basis than is otherwise required under Medicare.

Extends from at least once every 5 years to at least once every 10 years the application of competitive procedures when the contract of a Medicare administrative contractor comes up for renewal.

Directs the Secretary, to the extent possible without compromising the process for entering into and renewing contracts with Medicare administrative contractors (MACs), to make available to the public the performance of each MAC with respect to requirements and measurement standards.
Topic: Health — General
Subject: Health
Date: 2015-02-03 00:00:00

Health and Human Services Hiree Clarification Act

Amends the Public Health Service Act to state that provisions authorizing the appointment of special consultants or authorizing individual scientists to receive fellowships do not authorize the designation, appointment, or employment of any special consultant, fellow, or other employee by an agency outside of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Topic: Health — General
Subject: Health
Date: 2015-03-13 00:00:00

Medicaid Requiring Expenditures for Public Objectives to be Reflective of Total Spending Act or the Medicaid REPORTS Act 

 This bill amends title XIX (Medicaid) of the Social Security Act to direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services to require each state to report each source of funds, each entity providing such funds, and the amount of funds from each source, used by the state to finance the non-federal share of expenditures under Medicaid.

The Secretary must make the information reported publicly available through publication on the Internet site of the Centers for Medicaid & Medicaid Services.
Topic: Health — General
Subject: Health
Date: 2015-03-17 00:00:00

Medicaid Tax Fairness Act of 2015

This bill amends title XIX (Medicaid) of the Social Security Act, with respect to payments to states for medical assistance programs, to reduce from 6% to 5.5% on a graduated basis for 2016-2020 and each subsequent year the indirect guarantee thresholds applied for determining permissible broad-based state or local health care-related provider taxes where a requirement is in effect to hold taxpayers harmless for any portion of the costs of the tax.

(Currently the state [or other unit of government] imposing a broad-based health care-related tax or tax on each health care class provides for a direct or indirect non-Medicaid payment to those providers or others paying the tax, which may include an offset or waiver that directly or indirectly guarantees to hold taxpayers harmless for all or any portion of the tax amount. Such taxes are permissible if they are applied at a rate that produces revenues less than or equal to 6% of the revenues received by the taxpayer.)
Topic: Health — General
Subject: Armed forces and national security
Date: 2015-03-23 00:00:00

Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Facility Earthquake Protection and Improvement Act

This bill authorizes the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to carry out the major medical facility projects of the VA specified in the explanatory statement accompanying the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2015, including by obligating and expending the amounts specified in such statement. (Those projects include seismic corrections to the West Los Angeles Medical Center, replacement of a community living center and mental health facilities in Long Beach, and replacement of an existing spinal cord injury clinic in San Diego, California, all of which are at high risk of sustaining damage during an earthquake, and renovations to address substantial safety and compliance issues and construction of a new clinic and community living center at the VA medical center in Canandaigua, New York.)
Topic: Health — General
Subject: Armed forces and national security
Date: 2015-04-16 00:00:00

Equalizing Transparency for Veterans Act

Directs the Secretary of Veterans Affairs (VA) to biennially publish information on the VA's provision of health care on a VA Internet database that is publicly available.

Includes among that information for each VA medical facility:

 quality measures regarding inpatient and outpatient care that the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) is required to make publicly available under the Medicare program; the average length of stay, opioid prescription rate, and suicide rate for patients discharged from the facility; and the average number of days a patient waited for an appointment or procedure at such facility. Includes in such information for each VA nursing home any quality measures the Secretary of HHS makes publicly available regarding Medicare nursing homes.

Directs the Secretary to establish a process to validate the published information.

Requires the Secretary to annually submit a plan to Congress to improve each VA medical facility that ranks within the bottom quartile on each quality measure used by the Secretary to rank such facilities.

Directs the Secretary to establish a toll-free telephone number for individuals to use to notify the Secretary of low-quality care being provided at a VA medical facility.
Topic: Health — General
Subject: Health
Date: 2015-05-13 00:00:00

This bill amends title XVIII (Medicare) of the Social Security Act, in order to facilitate price transparency with respect to items and services for which payment may be made to a hospital outpatient department or to an ambulatory surgery center, to require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to make available to the public via a searchable website: (1) the estimated payment amount for an appropriate number of items and services under the outpatient department fee schedule and the ambulatory surgical center payment system, and (2) the estimated amount of beneficiary liability applicable to such an item or service.
Topic: Health — General
Subject: Health
Date: 2015-05-18 00:00:00

Sensible Oversight for Technology which Advances Regulatory Efficiency Act or the SOFTWARE Act

This bill amends the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to define health software as software that does not acquire, process, or analyze data from an in vitro diagnostic device or signal acquisition system, is not an accessory or part of a medical device, is not used to prevent disease in the transfusion of blood and blood components, and is for:

 administrative or operational support or the processing and maintenance of financial records; use in clinical, laboratory, or administrative workflow and recordkeeping; managing data but not for active patient monitoring or controlling the functions of a connected medical device; organizing and presenting information for health or wellness education or maintaining a healthy lifestyle; or analyzing information to provide general health information or patient-specific recommendations. The FDA must classify an accessory of a medical device independently from the medical device with which it is used.

Health software is exempted from regulation by the FDA (including as a medical device), except for software that provides patient-specific recommendations and poses a significant risk to patient safety.

The FDA must review existing regulations and guidance regarding the regulation of health software.
Topic: Health — General
Subject: Health
Date: 2015-05-19 00:00:00

This bill amends the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to allow a person to request that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recognize all or part of a performance standard established by a nationally or internationally recognized standard organization as a standard to which a medical device may conform in order to meet an FDA requirement. When a request to recognize a standard is received, the FDA must determine whether to recognize all, part, or none of the standard and publish the rationale for that determination. (Currently, the FDA recognizes certain performance standards, but it is not required to respond to requests or publish rationales for recognizing standards.)

The FDA must: (1) publish the rationale for recognizing only part of a standard, (2) periodically train employees who review premarket submissions for medical devices on the concept and use of recognized standards for purposes of meeting requirements, and (3) publish its principles for recognizing standards.
Topic: Health — General
Subject: Health
Date: 2015-05-19 00:00:00

This bill amends the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to revise the requirements for health care economic information that is provided to entities selecting drugs for coverage or reimbursement, such as formularies. The information must include a conspicuous and prominent statement describing the differences between the information and the labeling approved for the drug.

"Health care economic information" is an analysis that describes the economic consequences of the use of a drug. Such an analysis is no longer required to compare the use of the drug to another intervention or no intervention. An analysis that relates only to an indication for which the drug is not approved is not health care economic information.
Topic: Health — General
Subject: Health
Date: 2015-05-22 00:00:00

Fair Medical Audits Act of 2015

This bill amends title XVIII (Medicare) of the Social Security Act to modify requirements related to the identification and recovery of overpayments under Medicare.

A contract between the the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and a recovery audit contractor must require the contractor to provide a health care provider with: (1) specified identifying, legal, and logistical information; (2) an identification of any errors or underpayments discovered in the audit; and (3) a description of how any requested overpayment amount was calculated. Standards for extrapolation when used to determine overpayment amounts are established. CMS must require a contractor to give a provider at least 90 days' notice of identified code over-utilization and to reimburse a provider for the cost of producing certain documentation. The retrospective audit period is limited to two (rather than four) years.

Recovery audit contractors must have staff with knowledge and experience related to clinical licensure and medical records, claims, and codes. A contractor that has excessive overturned determinations shall be subject to administrative penalty and, under specified circumstances, liable for attorneys' fees.

In the case of a provider seeking reconsideration of an overpayment determination, CMS may not recoup the overpayment until a decision has been rendered at the third level of appeal by an Administrative Law Judge. A recoupment based on a decision that is reversed on appeal must be returned to the provider within 30 days.
Topic: Health — General
Subject: Health
Date: 2015-05-29 00:00:00

Securing Care for Seniors Act of 2015

(Sec. 2) This bill amends part C (Medicare+Choice) of title XVIII (Medicare) of the Social Security Act (SSAct) to direct the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) (in effect, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services [CMS]) to revise for 2017, and periodically afterwards, the system for risk adjustments to payments to Medicare+Choice organizations so that an individual's risk score takes into account the number of chronic conditions with which the individual has been diagnosed.

HHS must, including an actuarial opinion of the CMS Chief Actuary, evaluate the impacts of:

 including two years of data to compare the models used to determine the risk scores for 2013 and 2014, removing the diagnosis codes related to chronic kidney disease in the 2014 risk adjustment model, and including 10% of encounter data in computing payment for 2016 and CMS readiness to incorporate encounter data in risk scores. HHS shall also analyze the best practices of MedicareAdvantage (MA) plans to slow disease progression related to chronic kidney disease.

HHS shall then, if appropriate, make revisions to the risk adjustment system, based on such an evaluation or analysis, to better reflect and appropriately weight for the population served.

(Sec. 3) Congress declares that the MA star rating system lacks proper accounting for the socioeconomic status of plan enrollees and the extent to which those plans serve individuals also eligible for medical assistance under SSAct title XIX (Medicaid).
Topic: Health — General
Subject: Health
Date: 2015-06-02 00:00:00

Accuracy in Medicare Physician Payment Act of 2015 

 Amends title XVIII (Medicare) of the Social Security Act to direct the Department of Health and Human Services to establish and appoint an expert outside advisory panel for purposes of providing oversight to the processes relating to valuation of physicians' services.
Topic: Health — General
Subject: Health
Date: 2015-07-07 00:00:00

Medicare Telehealth Parity Act of 2015

Amends title XVIII (Medicare) of the Social Security Act to expand telehealth coverage in three phases.

Extends the term "originating site," for telehealth service payment purposes, to additional sites, including any federally qualified health center and any rural health clinic, at which the eligible telehealth individual is located at the time the service is furnished via a telecommunications system.

Prohibits application of the originating site facility fee to the additional sites.

Authorizes additional telehealth providers, including a certified diabetes educator or licensed respiratory therapist, audiologist, occupational therapist, physical therapist, or speech language pathologist.

Authorizes the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to develop payment methods to apply in the case of anyone who would be an eligible telehealth individual except that the telehealth services are furnished at a site other than an originating site.

Extends Medicare coverage to remote patient management services for certain chronic health conditions.

Authorizes home telehealth sites as additional originating sites.

 Requires the monthly fee or other basis of payment for physicians' services to individuals with end stage renal disease (ESRD) to allow for a patient-specific waiver process to permit a physician, clinical nurse specialist, nurse practitioner, or physician's assistant to request a waiver of face-to-face visit requirements for home dialysis of ESRD patients.

Requires all ESRD patients receiving home dialysis to receive a face-to-face examination at least once every three consecutive months and, in the intervening months, to receive a monthly clinical assessment which may be furnished, if the patient so chooses, via remote monitoring by a physician, clinical nurse specialist, nurse practitioner, or physician's assistant.

Directs HHS, in determining the component of a physician's fee corresponding to practice expense relative value units for diagnostic tests provided remotely, to include in direct costs of supplies and equipment the costs of the diagnostic device, clinical systems (including hardware and software), information transmission, and device delivery and installation. Directs the Government Accountability Office to study the effectiveness of using specified telehealth services between therapy providers and patients, any associated savings, and the potential for greater use of telehealth services for other forms of therapy.
Topic: Health — General
Subject: Health
Date: 2015-07-15 00:00:00

TELEmedicine for MEDicare Act of 2015 or the TELE-MED Act of 2015

This bill amends title XVIII (Medicare) of the Social Security Act to allow a Medicare provider to provide telemedicine services to a Medicare beneficiary who is in a different state from the one in which the provider is licensed or authorized to provide health care services. The licensing or authorizing state has jurisdiction to enforce its licensure or other legal authorization requirements with regard to such a provision of service.
Topic: Health — General
Subject: Health
Date: 2015-07-28 00:00:00

This bill amends title XVIII (Medicare) of the Social Security Act to exclude from Medicare coverage advanced planning services, with the exception of certain hospice-related services that may include advising on end-of-life or advanced care planning.
Topic: Health — General
Subject: Health
Date: 2015-07-29 00:00:00

Further Flexibility in HIT Reporting and Advancing Interoperability Act or the Flex-IT 2 Act

This bill amends titles XVIII (Medicare) and XIX (Medicaid) of the Social Security Act to modify Medicare and Medicaid program requirements related to electronic health record (EHR) meaningful use programs, which establish incentives to promote EHR meaningful use and the adoption of health information technology (HIT).

Specifically, the bill requires the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid to establish and apply a linear scale to determine meaningful or "partial meaningful" EHR use. In accordance with this linear scale, eligible professionals and hospitals that are partial meaningful EHR users shall: (1) receive certain incentive payments currently available only to meaningful EHR users, and (2) be partially exempt from certain negative payment adjustments.

In addition, the bill: (1) establishes three-month reporting periods for the Medicare and Medicaid EHR incentive payment programs; (2) modifies provisions regarding quality reporting on meaningful EHR use; (3) expands the hardship exception to Medicare EHR payment adjustments; and (4) limits, with respect to timing and frequency, the adoption of more stringent measures of EHR meaningful use under Medicaid and Medicare.

The bill also amends the Public Health Service Act to: (1) require the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to pause rulemaking related to EHR meaningful use, unless and until specified conditions are met; and (2) prohibit HHS from proposing the adoption of certain untested standards regarding HIT.
Topic: Health — General
Subject: Armed forces and national security
Date: 2015-11-03 00:00:00

Veteran's Choice Accountability Act

This bill directs the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to:

 evaluate VA programs that furnish hospital care, medical services, and nursing home care to ensure that the most intensively used specialized care programs are maintained as centers of excellence; and submit to Congress an evaluation of the VA's implementation of the VA Budget and Choice Improvement Act.