News Briefs
Medicare to Cut Some Specialty Doctor Pay by 2.5% in 2026
The Trump administration finalized a controversial plan to reevaluate how Medicare calculates doctor payments that will result in lower rates for specialty services. Medicare will implement a 2.5 percent cut next year to payments for services like radiology and gastroenterology that are based on more than time spent delivering the service.
(Source: Axios, 2025-11-03)
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FDA Speeds Development of Biosimilars in Effort to Lower Costs
The Food and Drug Administration wants to speed the development of biosimilars, announcing new guidance that would no longer require the makers of copycat biologics to run human trials showing their products are as effective and safe as their branded counterparts. The FDA agency said the policy shift should make biosimilar development faster and cheaper, estimating that companies could now save $100 million in development costs per product.
(Source: Healthcare Dive, 2025-10-29)
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CMS Telehealth Rules a Mixed Bag for Providers
The final version of the 2026 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule offers some good news on virtual care delivered in hospitals and skilled nursing facilities. On the opposite side of the ledger, CMS won't continue the policy of allowing providers to report and bill for telehealth services using their currently enrolled practice location, even when they're connecting with patients from their homes during nights and weekends.
(Source: HealthLeaders Media, 2025-11-03)
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Study Finds 1% of Physicians Sponsored for H-1B Visas in 2024
About one percent of U.S. physicians were sponsored for H-1B visas in fiscal year 2024, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Michael Liu, M.D., from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, and colleagues conducted a cross-sectional study to examine the percentage of U.S. healthcare professionals sponsored for H-1B visas in fiscal year 2024 across occupation groups and county characteristics.
(Source: HealthDay, 2025-10-31)
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Third Quarter Hospital, Health System M&A Rebounded
Hospital and health system merger-and-acquisition activity rebounded in the third quarter of 2025, marking a shift in momentum after a sluggish start to the year. Transactions climbed to 15 over that span, an increase from the eight announced in the previous quarter and the five tallied in the first quarter, according to Kaufman Hall's latest M&A Quarterly Activity Report.
(Source: HealthLeaders Media, 2025-10-30)
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Healthgrades' Top Specialty Hospital List Shows Huge Differences
Healthgrades' 2026 Top Hospitals for Specialty Care list shows a stark disparity between the best- and worst-performing hospitals nationwide, finding that if everyone performed as five-star hospitals did, more than 230,000 lives could've been saved. The rankings -- which recognized the hospitals with the best clinical performance across 16 specialty areas, the top performers for outpatient care for certain conditions, and state rankings for specialty care -- showed that not every specialty care experience is equal.
(Source: Tech Target, 2025-11-03)
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More Doctors Than Ever Leaving Medicine, Study Finds
A recent study from the School of Medicine found that physicians today are leaving medicine more than ever before. The nationwide analysis of over 712,000 physicians revealed that physician attrition, the rate at which doctors leave their clinical practice, has increased substantially across specialties over the years studied.
(Source: Yale Daily News, 2025-11-03)
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Healthcare Industry Adopting AI at Twice Rate of U.S. Economy
Healthcare organizations are implementing commercial AI solutions at more than twice the rate (2.2x) of the broader U.S. economy, according to a recent report from Menlo Ventures. Over one in five (22 percent) of healthcare organizations have deployed domain-specific AI tools via paid commercial licenses in 2025 -- a 7x YoY increase and 10x increase from 2023.
(Source: eMarketer, 2025-10-31)
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Healthcare Industry Embraces AI, But Not Governance or Evaluation
The healthcare industry has become imbued with artificial intelligence -- nearly every point solution vendor is selling AI as part of their offering, as evidenced by the HLTH 2025 conference in Las Vegas. While the technology has matured beyond AI scribes to incorporate agents that can act on behalf of an individual, the healthcare industry has not coalesced around governance and evaluation strategies to oversee the performance of these tools post-deployment.
(Source: FierceHealthcare, 2025-10-29)
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Healthcare Consumers Prefer At-Home Devices, Security a Risk
While a majority of healthcare consumers would prefer to monitor their health at home and find at-home care affordable, concerns surrounding data security persist, according to a survey shared with Virtual Healthcare. Survey results indicate that healthcare consumers overwhelmingly support the use of at-home medical devices.
(Source: Tech Target, 2025-10-29)
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Rural Communities Face Weakening Doctor Supply Amid High Visa Fee
A new analysis of Department of Labor data suggests rural communities and those with higher levels of poverty will be disproportionately affected by the government's new $100,000 fees for H-1B visa applications. Published in JAMA, the study of H-1B applications found more than 11,000 of the country's physicians, or just less than one percent of the national workforce, were sponsored for H-1B visas in the 2024 federal fiscal year (ended Sept. 30, 2024).
(Source: FierceHealthcare, 2025-10-30)
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