The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued the final rule for fiscal year (FY) 2025 Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) and Long-Term Care Hospital Prospective Payment System (LTCH PPS) on Aug. 1, 2024....more
Since 2010, a reported 140 rural hospitals have closed their doors, including a record 19 hospitals in 2020 alone as a result of the financial pressures of COVID-19 compounded by many other long-standing challenges facing...more
Editor’s Note: In late June 2022, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Innovation Center (CMMI) launched the Enhancing Oncology Model (EOM), an alternative payment model seeking to incentivize providers in...more
As has been widely reported, earlier this summer, President Biden issued Executive Order (EO) 14036, “Promoting Competition in the American Economy.” The EO provides insight into how the Biden-Harris administration plans to...more
On November 20, 2020, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued the final rule “Modernizing and Clarifying the Physician Self-Referral Regulations” (Final Rule)....more
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has long acknowledged the disparities in care and outcomes affecting the one in five Americans who live in rural areas, as well as the financial challenges faced by rural...more
CMS recently announced updates and milestones for several programs run by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI). CMMI is the internal CMS agency responsible for developing and testing new health care payment...more
CMI, CMMI, and Changing the Consumer Experience in the U.S. and China - Case Mix Index: Sitting in multiple hospital, payor and physician organization presentations at the J.P. Morgan healthcare conference this year, it is...more
On April 21, 2019, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (“CMMI”) announced the CMS Primary Cares Initiative – a voluntary, risk-based initiative to transform the Medicare program’s reimbursement of primary care...more
On July 10, 2019, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (Innovation Center) released a much awaited proposal for a new bundled payment model for radiation...more
August 24, 2018 marked a busy day for the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services' (HHS) self-designated "Regulatory Sprint to Coordinated Care," an initiative aimed at dismantling the regulatory barriers to providers...more
The State of Maryland is unique in its historical experimentation with rate setting and global budgets for hospitals, and that experimentation continues with the Maryland Total Cost of Care Model (TCOC). Beginning January...more
Enforcement - OIG Issues Advisory Opinion on Provision of Samples by a Device Distributor - On April 30, 2018, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a...more
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is launching BPCI Advanced – the successor program to the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Initiative. Providers that like the current BPCI program, or simply missed the...more
CMS issued a final rule on January 3, 2017, implementing three new episode payment models (EPMs) and a Cardiac Rehabilitation (CR) incentive payment model under the authority of the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation...more
Given that Republicans will soon control both Congress and the White House, hospitals may be concerned that expenditures that have helped reduce the ranks of the uninsured will be ratcheted down. However, forward-thinking...more
On November 16, 2015, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released final regulations implementing the Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement Model, its five-year mandatory bundled payment program for hip and...more
For some health care providers, a pair of recent announcements made by the Obama Administration to implement mandatory alternative payment models (APMs) for home health value-based purchasing and bundled payments for hip and...more