The CMS Interoperability and Prior Authorization Rules
Podcast — Drug Pricing: How Are Payers Responding to the IRA?
Findings from Gibbins’ Annual Healthcare Bankruptcy Report
A Fond Farewell: Musings on the End of the Medicare Advantage Hospice Carve-In Demonstration
Video: Braidwood v. Becerra – Challenging the Affordable Care Act’s Preventive Services Coverage Provision – Thought Leaders in Health Law
Hospice and Home Health Survey Perspectives: A Conversation with Kim Skehan, VP of Accreditation at CHAP
Transparency and the Open Payments Program
Taking the Pulse, A Health Care and Life Sciences Video Podcast | Episode 173: Improving rural health care with Dr. Kevin Bennett, the Director of the Research Center for Transforming Health and the
Counsel That Cares - The Private Payer's Perspective on Value-Based Care
Podcast: Health Equity – Behind the Buzzwords – Diagnosing Health Care
A Very “Special” Episode: Amid Controversy, CMS Launches the Hospice Special Focus Program
Grace from CMS: Unexpected Good News on HIS and CAHPS Appeals
This Bandwagon Has a Broken Wheel: OIG Joins the Inconsistent Approach to Hospice GIP Claims
Behind the Curtain: Enhanced Provider Enrollment Oversight
Survey Woes: CMS Ramps Up Hospice Survey Program and Consequences
Inflation Reduction Act’s Drug Price Negotiation Provisions – What Now? – Diagnosing Health Care Podcast
A Glimpse Into the Other Side: Understanding the Perspective of Government Enforcers
I Understood There Would Be No Math: Audits, Extrapolations, and a New Set of Rules
Podcast: Inflation Reduction Act’s Drug Price Negotiation Provisions – What’s Next? - Diagnosing Health Care
On August 15, 2024, CMS announced the results of the first round of the negotiated prices between CMS and participating drug manufacturers for the 10 selected drugs under the Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) Medicare Drug...more
On August 1, 2024, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released a final rule updating the Medicare inpatient prospective payment system (IPPS) for acute care hospitals and the Medicare prospective payment...more
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently hosted its second annual CMS Health Equity Conference on May 29 – 30, 2024, focusing on the theme “sustaining health equity through action.” The event was a...more
House Oversight Subcommittee Hearing with Fauci. The hearing aimed to gather more information on the response to the COVID-19 pandemic by Anthony Fauci, MD, former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases...more
Last week, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) held the second annual CMS Health Equity Conference. The event drew several hundred in-person attendees, including my colleague Kayla Holgash, and thousands of...more
On April 22, 2024, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued Ensuring Access to Medicaid Services, a final rule designed to address a range of barriers that Medicaid beneficiaries face in accessing home- and...more
House Energy & Commerce Health Subcommittee Holds Legislative Hearing on Improving Medicaid Access. Daniel Tsai, deputy administrator and director of the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services (CMCS), testified. Members...more
On April 22, 2024, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) published the Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program Managed Care Access, Finance, and Quality final rule. CMS finalized several substantial...more
Congress is back in session this week, with the House in today and the Senate returning tomorrow. They are back for a four-week stretch until the Memorial Day recess break. Congress has already moved many of the major bills...more
A Quiet Healthcare Week on Capitol Hill. Congress was largely in recess this week, although the Senate returned briefly to complete consideration of a long-awaited foreign aid bill. Both chambers will return to session the...more
Earlier this week, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released two final regulations that added new requirements for states when operating their Medicaid programs. Medicaid is currently the largest health...more
The upcoming election, and the approaching end of the President’s four-year term, introduce additional dynamics into the agencies’ rulemaking process and even the guidance process. From now through the November election, the...more
Summary- On January 18, 2024, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced Innovations in Behavioral Health (IBH), a new eight-year model focused...more
House Energy & Commerce Health Subcommittee Holds Hearing on Cybersecurity. During the hearing, there was bipartisan concern about UnitedHealth Group’s response to the Change Healthcare cyberattack and consensus around the...more
Senate HELP Committee Holds Field Hearing on Private Equity. In the hearing, held at the Massachusetts State House, members discussed the impact of private equity ownership on patients, providers, quality of care and...more
Last Sunday, Congress released the text of a minibus package, which will likely be signed into law by tomorrow. While the bill’s primary purpose is to keep the government open, it also includes healthcare extenders through...more
Braidwood v. Becerra represents a significant legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA’s) preventive services coverage provision, which requires private health insurance to cover various clinical preventive services,...more
On January 9, 2024, the Centers forMedicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) approved New York’s request to amend its Medicaid section 1115 demonstration waiver, “Medicaid Redesign Team.”1 New York State announced that the...more
A key element of the Medicaid Redesign Team 1115 Waiver amendment is the Medicaid Hospital Global Budget Initiative (GBI), a reimbursement model tied very closely to the States Advancing All-Payer Health Equity Approaches and...more
On December 15, 2023, the CMS Innovation Center (CMMI) announced a new voluntary model for state Medicaid agencies called Transforming Maternal Health (TMaH). TMaH was developed in response to the profound maternal morbidity...more
On January 9, 2024, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) approved the New York State (NY) 1115 Medicaid waiver “Medicaid Redesign Team” (MRT). The MRT is a long-standing waiver in NY that has continuously...more
On January 9, 2024, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) sent a letter to New York’s Medicaid director approving New York’s Section 1115 Waiver amendment, which the state submitted for approval on September 2,...more
Happy New Year! As we enter 2024, we want to lay out some of the main regulatory issues (both new and old) that McDermott+Consulting will be tracking over the next year. While these may evolve, we think they are still...more
As we continue to “unwind” from the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE), we are still very much in a transition period. Many of the policies that beneficiaries, providers, plans and states came to rely on during the...more
We’ve written recently about the process that states are undertaking to begin to wind down the Medicaid enrollment expansion that was necessitated by the enactment of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act in March of...more