July 3 is the last day that the eligible hospitals and critical access hospitals can begin their 90-day reporting period if they want to demonstrate meaningful use for the Medicare electronic health record incentive program for fiscal year 2013, according to an AHA News Now report.

Recently, the Medicare chargemaster data has been made publicly available for how much hospitals bill Medicare for top procedures. Rates varied widely and as media sources scramble to cover these variations, a new push toward price transparency is gaining momentum. The big question is: will price transparency for individual physicians be next?

Flying in the face of earlier reports that Medicare price variation is caused by wasteful spending, a study published in the journal Medical Care Research and Review found patients' health was to blame for 75 to 85 percent of Medicare price differences.

House Republicans unveiled a draft of a bill intended to replace Medicare's sustainable growth rate permanently and end the annual game of political hot potato in which lawmakers bargain to overwrite it and avoid cutting physician pay.

Sens. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) and Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) have introduced the Medicare Audit Improvement Act, a bipartisan companion bill to the House version that aims to reform Medicare Recovery Auditors, better known as Medicare RACs, according to an AHA News Now report.

CMS has issued guidance for certain physicians who provide services in the outpatient departments of critical access hospitals about how they can participate in the Medicare Electronic Health Record Incentive Program beginning this year, according to an AHA News Now report.  

Spinal fusions are a major procedure for patients and hospitals, and the amount charged for the procedure varies between $19,000 and more than $470,000.

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Last week, CMS released a trove of hospital inpatient billing data in an effort to increase price transparency. The data, which come from fiscal year 2011, detail charges and payments for the top 100 most frequently billed inpatient discharges for the 3,000-plus hospitals that are paid under Medicare's inpatient prospective payment system.

Here are the 10 hospitals that recorded the highest charges for spinal fusions in FY 2011. Note: Data come directly from CMS' database of hospital charges and reflects only hospitals paid under Medicare's IPPS. Data specifically reflects MS-DRG 460, spinal fusion except cervical, without major complications and comorbidities.

1.    Lourdes Medical Center of Burlington County (Willingboro, N.J.): $471,121
2.    Pottstown (Pa.) Memorial Medical Center: $323,318
3.    North Hills Hospital (North Richland Hills, Texas): $306,773
4.    Northridge (Calif.) Hospital Medical Center: $304,564
5.    Washington Hospital (Fremont, Calif.): $296,766
6.    Vista Medical Center East (Waukegan, Ill.): $284,148
7.    Presbyterian Intercommunity Hospital (Whittier, Ga.): $282,889
8.    Santa Rosa (Calif.) Memorial Hospital: $280,517
9.    CJW Medical Center (Richmond, Va.): $279,767
10.    University of California Davis Medical Center (Sacramento): $269,846

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