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
Quick Takeaways From the 2024 Proposed Hospice Wage Index Rule
I am fresh back from Baltimore, Maryland, where I was on the faculty of AHLA’s annual Institute on Medicare and Medicaid Payment Issues. I have been on the faculty of this program for a dozen years, and am always thrilled to...more
Kim Brandt, partner at Tarplin, Downs & Young has long provided the healthcare community with her expertise in all things Washington, having spent substantial time at CMS, the OIG at HHS and on Capitol Hill. She’ll be...more
In recent months, the Kaiser Health Network (part of the Kaiser Family Foundation) has issued three reports scrutinizing the orthopedic industry and its practices. Each report articulates the stakeholder group’s concerns over...more
The Physician Payment Sunshine Act (the “Sunshine Act”) – a federal law first adopted as Section 6002 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (“PPACA”) – requires the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid...more
Report on Medicare Compliance 29, no. 28 (August 3, 2020) - The HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) has given the green light to a plan by a charitable organization to “purchase or receive donations of unpaid medical...more
CMS recently announced through an MLN Matters article that it intended to place new home health agencies (HHAs) under enhanced oversight for a provisional period. The authority for CMS's oversight flows from a provision in...more
• The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has published the Calendar Year (CY) 2019 Final Rule for the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (PFS), which includes provisions related to Medicare physician payments as well...more
In its proposed HH PPS regulations published in the Federal Register on July 12, 2018, CMS would implement substantive changes for home health agencies. The proposed rule would rebase the market basket and update the payment...more
On April 23, 2018, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation issued a Request for Information (the RFI) on a direct provider contracting model for primary care. The RFI seeks input on how direct provider contracting...more
On April 5, 2018, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) announced its findings that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) paid practitioners for telehealth services that did not meet Medicare requirements....more
California’s Medicaid agency has posted draft language of a new state plan amendment (SPA) that would make major changes to federally qualified health center (FQHC) and Rural Health Clinic (RHC) reimbursement. Public comments...more
• Congress amended current law to prevent CMS from applying the “MIPS” payment adjustment to separately billed items like drugs and biologics, which will drastically reduce the total amount of payment adjustments to clinical...more
An August 14 meta-analysis of payment reform evaluations by Len Nichols and others offers health care investors a sobering appraisal of the success to-date of a range of payment reforms initiated by the Centers for Medicare &...more
Although the sufficiency of medical records documentation supporting beneficiary diagnoses for Medicare Advantage (MA) risk adjustment has been on the OIG’s work plan since 2013, the Department of Justice has upped the ante...more
In October 2016, CMS issued a Final Rule for the new physician payment system under the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA). MACRA replaced the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) with a new...more
The Affordable Care Act added the Physician Payment Sunshine Act (Sunshine Act) as section 1128G to the Social Security Act. The Sunshine Act requires applicable manufacturers of drugs, devices, biologicals, or medical...more
We are pleased to present our annual review of developments in the field of health law. The year was marked by key changes in False Claims Act jurisprudence and Medicare payment policy. 2016 also brought with it focused...more
CMS released the Final Rule with comment period delineating a portion of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) known as the Quality Payment Program (QPP) on October 14, 2016, with the official...more
On October 14, 2016, CMS issued its Final Rule for the new physician payment system under the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA). MACRA replaced the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) with a new...more
Furthering the agency’s stated intention to pay for value over volume, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently issued a proposed rule representing the first expansion of mandatory hospital-centric bundled...more
On September 8, 2016, CMS announced in a blogpost that new physician payment model reforms, established in the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA), will begin implementation on January 1, 2017, as...more
On July 13, 2016, CMS Acting Administrator Andy Slavitt testified before the Senate Finance Committee regarding the possibility of a delay in implementation of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA). ...more
As part of the CY 2017 proposed Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System rules (OPPS) the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released the long awaited proposed payment changes for items and services...more
In Depth - On April 27, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) unveiled the much-anticipated (and, for some, feared) proposal to implement the physician payment reforms required under the Medicare Access to...more
On June 14, 2016, during its annual meeting in Chicago, the American Medical Association’s (AMA) House of Delegates approved a resolution recommending the overhaul of CMS’s physician payment rate determination methodologies,...more