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
Telehealth Risk Report: What the Government Found
Podcast: American Rescue Plan Delivers New Stimulus Funding - Diagnosing Health Care
News Briefs - HHS Drops Appeal of Court's Ruling in Hospital Web Tracking Case - The Department of Health and Human Services is dropping its appeal of a June U.S. District Court ruling that vacated the government's...more
Following the national trend toward prohibiting or limiting non-compete agreements, Louisiana Senate Bill 165 limits the length and geographical scope of non-compete agreements for both specialty and primary care physicians....more
CMS's FY 2025 Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) Proposed Rule (Proposed Rule) includes several noteworthy proposals and requests for information related to graduate medical education (GME) payment policies. Below...more
News Briefs - Lawmakers Mull Lifting Restrictions on Physician-Owned Hospitals - Nearly 15 years ago, the construction of doctor-owned hospitals largely ground to a halt. But federal lawmakers now are considering bills that...more
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released the final calendar year (CY) 2024 Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) on Nov. 2, 2023. The rule, which finalizes policies for Medicare payments under the PFS and other...more
Changes to the Medicare Telehealth Services List Structure and Updates Process - Prior to the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) evaluated changes to the Medicare...more
Distances in rural health care can be hard to fathom. A 2018 study found it took rural Americans, on average, 17 minutes to get to a hospital, but only 10 minutes in an urban center. The distance between rural hospitals can...more
News Briefs - CMS Enforces Hospital Price Transparency Rule with Fines CMS is cracking down on hospital price transparency compliance -- or lack thereof. The federal agency announced updated enforcement procedures, including...more
Beginning in 2023, Medicare will recognize a new provider type: the Rural Emergency Hospital (REH). The establishment of REHs is intended to preserve access to emergency departments and other outpatient services in rural...more
The Big Picture - Until late December, few if any Medicare policy changes were anticipated as part of a year-end healthcare package, barring extensions of funding for programs that otherwise would have expired. But after...more
On August 3, 2020, CMS issued proposed rules announcing and soliciting public comments on new policy changes for Medicare payments under the Calendar Year (CY) 2021 Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) and other Medicare Part B...more
The novel Coronavirus (“COVID-19”) pandemic has brought about unprecedented applications of certain federal healthcare laws and regulations, including the federal physician self-referral law (the “Stark Law”) and the federal...more
Appropriations committee reviews health care workforce bill - The House Appropriations committee reviewed H.607 on Tuesday, a bill aimed at increasing the health care workforce in Vermont. The bill requires the Vermont...more
The healthcare real estate industry finds itself in unchartered waters while grappling with the myriad issues created by the COVID-19 pandemic. Landlords are flooded with requests from tenants for rent relief as healthcare...more
CMS just released the 2020 final rule with changes to remote patient monitoring (RPM), officially titled “Chronic Care Remote Physiologic Monitoring,” reimbursed under the Medicare program, as part of the Physician Fee...more
A recently passed Florida law, Florida Statutes 542.336 seeks to prevent medical providers from using restrictive covenants to monopolize medical specialties in rural counties. The law bars the enforcement of “restrictive...more
Among the many provisions in the FY 2020 Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) proposed rule is one that would alter the supervision standards applicable to hospital outpatient therapeutic services. See 84 Fed. Reg....more
In a decision that extends the FTC's winning streak in the courts of appeals in healthcare provider merger cases, the Eighth Circuit affirmed the Federal Trade Commission's ("FTC") bid to enjoin Sanford Health's acquisition...more
With media attention focused, and rightfully so, on the migrant crisis at our southern border, it is also important to pay attention to a more slowly-brewing crisis in our immigration policies and laws that directly affect...more
The United States health care system is struggling with an acute shortage of doctors. What does that have to do with immigration? The short answer is: Quite a lot. The longer answer leads us to an inescapable conclusion that...more
New legislation impacting international medical graduates would extend the Conrad State 30 program until 2021, improve the process for obtaining a visa, and allow for additional slots if certain thresholds are met. The bill...more
The Georgia Hospital Association held its Center for Rural Health (CRH) Annual Meeting in St. Simons Island August 22-24, 2018. Rural hospitals from across the state convened on the island to discuss success stories, learn...more
Two federal agencies – the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (“CMS”) and the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) – announced separate initiatives last week that stand to increase patient access to telehealth...more
On May 8, 2018, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the agency’s first Rural Health Strategy (RH Strategy), which is designed to promote CMS policies that help make rural healthcare more accessible,...more
On July 13, 2017, CMS released a proposed rule as part of its 2018 Outpatient Prospective Payment System proposals that is aimed at helping to reduce some of the burdens rural hospitals experience in recruiting physicians....more