Rural Spotlight

On-Demand Webinar: Recoupments 101: The Biggest RCM Problem No One’s Talking About

January 16, 2026

On-Demand Webinar: Recoupments 101: The Biggest RCM Problem No One’s Talking About

For ASCs and ambulatory providers, recoupments can be devastating. A single payer takeback can wipe out weeks of margin, strain small billing teams and trigger rework that outpatient workflows aren’t built to handle.

Yet recoupments – also called takebacks or chargebacks – remain one of the least understood revenue cycle risks in ambulatory care.

This on-demand webinar breaks down how recoupments work in ASC and ambulatory settings and why treating them like denials puts organizations at risk.

Attendees will take away a clear, practical primer on payer audits, retroactive adjustments and provider-level balances, with a focus on how these issues uniquely impact outpatient revenue cycles.

Learnings include:

  • Recoupment terminology and why confusion costs ASCs real dollars,
  • The true financial and operational impact on ambulatory revenue cycles,
  • How payer audits and retroactive adjustments drive outpatient takebacks,
  • Why denial workflows fail in ASC environments, and
  • How visibility and automation can help ambulatory teams regain control.

Click Here to Access this On-Demand Webinar

eBook: Where Progress Meets Purpose: How 3 Systems Turned Data into Outcomes

January 16, 2026

eBook: Where Progress Meets Purpose: How 3 Systems Turned Data into Outcomes

Rising costs, fragmented systems and performance pressures are pushing hospitals to their limits. But some health systems are turning that pressure into progress – using trusted data and cross-functional collaboration to drive measurable improvement. For nearly twenty years, health Catalyst has worked alongside healthcare organizations to tackle the toughest challenges they face. We’ve seen what works, what doesn’t, and what it takes to turn your vision into massive measurable, data-informed healthcare improvement.

This eBook distills strategies from leading health systems into a clear playbook for driving clinical, operational and financial results. From cutting sepsis mortality to automating population health outreach, these organizations show what’s possible when data drives action, not just insight.

You’ll learn about:

  • Proven frameworks that help teams cut through complexity and act decisively.
  • How technology and services work together to solve your unique use cases.
  • Real-world use cases showing how outcomes deliver lasting impact, including a 20% analytics capacity gain and a 23% relative drop in sepsis mortality.

Click Here to download eBook

Hospital Preparedness Academy 2026 – Nine Part Virtual Series, Starts February 10

January 16, 2026

Hospital Preparedness Academy 2026 – Nine Part Virtual Series, Starts February 10

The Hospital Preparedness Academy is a comprehensive training series designed to build the capabilities of hospital emergency preparedness professionals across all phases of emergency management. Through nine targeted sessions, participants will explore regulatory frameworks, risk assessment methodologies, planning tools, clinical and infrastructure considerations, technology systems and collaborative strategies.

Series Objectives:

By the end of the Hospital Preparedness academy, participants will be able to:

  • Understand and apply key regulatory requirement and foundational components of hospital emergency preparedness programs,
  • Develop and implement core emergency management plans, including risk assessments, emergency operations, communications and continuity of operations, and
  • Integrate clinical preparedness, technology tools, infrastructure resilience, collaborative relationships and responder wellness strategies into hospital emergency planning and response.

Cost:

  • MHA members – $395
  • Non-MHA members – $495

This virtual event is eligible for the use of the MHA Health Institute coupon.

When: 9 sessions

  • Tuesday, February 10, 2026
  • Tuesday, February 17, 2026
  • Tuesday, February 24, 2026
  • Tuesday, March 3, 2026
  • Tuesday, March 10, 2026
  • Tuesday, March 17, 2026
  • Tuesday, March 24, 2026
  • Tuesday, March 31, 2026
  • Tuesday, April 7, 2026

Click Here to Learn More and Register

AWHONN Obstetric Patient Safety: OB Emergencies Workshop, March 17 or 18

January 16, 2026

AWHONN Obstetric Patient Safety: OB Emergencies Workshop, March 17 or 18

Join the MO PQC and the Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses for a workshop designed to disseminate best practices for various obstetric emergencies. This workshop satisfies the CMS rule that all staff involved in obstetric care receive annual training on protocols and provisions for emergency services. Through active simulation and debriefing, this workshop helps clinicians working in any clinical setting to identify, assess and manage the care for patients with an obstetric emergency.

  • The same training is being offered on Wednesday, March 18. Registrants only need to attend one day of training.
  • Online prerequisite course required. Registered attendees have 30 days to complete the course before attending in-person training.

Cost: $25.00

When: Tuesday, March 17 or Wednesday, March 18

Where: Mercy Hospital, 1235 East Cherokee Street, Springfield, MO 65804

Click Here to Register

Webinar: From Retrospective to Real Time: Transforming CMS Star Rating and Leapfrog Objectives into Bedside Action, February 17

January 16, 2026

Webinar: From Retrospective to Real Time: Transforming CMS Star Rating and Leapfrog Objectives into Bedside Action, February 17

Hospitals are under constant pressure to perform in quality programs like CMS Star Ratings, Leapfrog, VBP and HRRP, yet most manage these initiatives retrospectively, through lagging metrics and after-action reviews.

The delay creates blind spots: frontline teams don’t know about the 10% of patients who drive the majority of CMS Star Ratings and other quality programs, or how to intervene in time to change outcomes.

This webinar shares how leading hospitals are connecting enterprise quality targets with real-time patient identification, risk stratification and care team activation, while patients are still in the bed.

Key takeaways:

  • Translate enterprise priorities into patient-level flags staff can act on daily,
  • Identify cohorts driving readmissions, mortality, and cost before discharge, and
  • Link stratified risk to workflows across rounding, discharge and care coordination.

Cost: Free

When: Tuesday, February 17, 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.

Click Here to Register

Webinar: How Hospitals are Making Resident Well-Being Core to GME, February 5

January 16, 2026

Webinar: How Hospitals are Making Resident Well-Being Core to GME, February 5

Residency has always been demanding. But today’s trainees face new stressors layered on top of old ones: EHR overload, reduced autonomy, economic pressure and social isolation.

Traditional mental health models weren’t built for this – and residents are feeling the strain.

In this live webinar, join Mickey Trockel, MD, director of evidence-based innovation for Stanford University School of Medicine’s WellMD Center and Robert Flora, MD, chief academic officer and vice president of academic affairs at McLaren Health Care, to examine how modern graduate medical education is reshaping the mental health landscape.

They’ll explore the unique vulnerabilities of residents, how the training environment is changing in ways leaders underestimate, and why common mental health approaches fail in GME and what actually works.

Insights include:

  • How new GME dynamics interact with longstanding mental health risks,
  • Why traditional wellness programs often fail and what to replace them with, and
  • Practical steps to embed mental health infrastructure across training programs.

Cost: Free

When: Thursday, February 5, 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

Click Here to Register

Webinar: Prevention in Practice: Rethinking Health Cost Control, February 4

January 16, 2026

Webinar: Prevention in Practice: Rethinking Health Cost Control, February 4

GLP-1s and high-cost claims get the attention, but the real drain on health plans? Chronic disease driven by delayed intervention and low preventive care use.

Join finance and HR leaders from CommonSpirit and MedStar to explore a prevention-first model proven to reduce costs and improve health outcomes.

You’ll get their insights on engaging employees and measuring what matters and their strategy to shift from reactive to proactive care models.

Key takeaways:

  • Why prevention gaps are costing more than you think and how to close them,
  • How to build engagement in whole-person care, including condition management, and
  • Which metrics employers use to prove the ROI of prevention-first strategies.

Cost: Free

When: Wednesday, February 4, 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Click Here to Register

Now Available: Medicare Survey on Hospital Outpatient Drug Costs

January 14, 2026

Now Available: Medicare Survey on Hospital Outpatient Drug Costs

Per an Executive Order and the 2026 Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) final rule, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS) will survey hospitals to find out how much they pay for outpatient drugs.

This survey runs from January 1 through March 31, 2026. The results will help shape Medicare payment policies starting in 2027.

Hospitals that received OPPS payments for outpatient drugs between July 1, 2024, and June 30, 2025, must complete the survey.

Contact OPPSDrugSurvey@cms.hhs.gov with any questions.

Click Here to Learn More and Access the Survey

New Form for Provider Complaints about Medicare Advantage Plans

January 14, 2026

New Form for Provider Complaints about Medicare Advantage Plans

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) launched a new online form for providers to submit complaints about Medicare Advantage plans.

The form collects basic information about the complainant, beneficiary, provider, and plan, along with a summary of the complaint.

Submitted complaints will be routed to CMS’s Health Plan Management System (HPMS) Complaints Tracking Module (CTM), where they will be queued and reviewed by CMS.

Click Here to Access Provider Complaints Form

Click Here to Review CMS’s Health Plan Management System Complaints Tracking Module

Rural Health Research: Rural-Urban Differences in Homebound Status by Health and Functional Limitations

January 14, 2026

Rural Health Research: Rural-Urban Differences in Homebound Status by Health and Functional Limitations

Without access to adequate institutional or home and community-based care, older adults may become homebound, a state that is associated with poorer health outcomes, higher rates of hospitalization and emergency department use, and greater risk of social isolation, functional decline, and mortality. Yet, little is known about how rates of being homebound differ between rural and urban older adults by specific health indicators. This brief from the University of Minnesota Rural Health Research Center addresses that gap.

Key Findings:

  • Rural and urban Medicare beneficiaries age 65 and older reported similar rates of being homebound (5.7% and 6.1%).
  • Rural older adults in very good health (on a scale from poor to excellent) were less likely than their urban counterparts to be homebound (0.4% vs. 2.1%). However, rural older adults in poor health were more likely to be homebound than urban older adults in poor health, although the difference was not statistically significant (35.7% vs 27.1%).
  • Among both rural and urban older adults, the highest rates of being homebound were among people with diagnoses of dementia (26.6% and 26.2%, respectively) and stroke (24.0% and 13.3%).

Click Here to Read More