Health care M&A
Here we go again! For the second year in a row, we enter the new year without Congress enacting a doc fix or Advanced Alternative Payment Model (APM) bonus extension. While Congress did act last year on both counts (through...more
As physician groups and other stakeholders work to finalize comment letters on the calendar year (CY) 2024 Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) proposed regulation by September 11, 2023, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services...more
On June 22, 2023, the US House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations held a hearing titled “MACRA Checkup: Assessing Implementation and Challenges that Remain for...more
On July 7, 2022, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released the CY 2023 Revisions to Payment Policies Under the Physician Fee Schedule and Other Revisions to Medicare Part B Proposed Rule, which was published...more
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on Nov. 1, 2019, published the Calendar Year (CY) 2020 Final Rule for the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (MPFS). The MPFS dictates Medicare rates and policies under Part B,...more
In this week’s episode, Steve Pine presents the last installment of our three part series addressing the CMS Quality Payment Program (QPP) updates in the CY2020 Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) Proposed Rule. In this episode, Mr....more
• The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) published the Calendar Year (CY) 2020 Proposed Rule for the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (MPFS). The MPFS dictates Medicare rates and policies under Part B, while the...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
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently announced that it has several “prevailing concerns” regarding the accuracy of the 2017 Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) scoring data that was used to set...more
On September 13, 2018, in an update entitled “CMS Updates 2017 MIPS Performance Feedback,” the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) disclosed that it made errors in the scoring logic used for the merit-based...more
On July 12, 2018, CMS issued proposed revisions to Year 3 of the Quality Payment Program (QPP) in the rule entitled Revisions to Payment Policies under the Physician Fee Schedule and Other Revisions to Part B for CY 2019;...more
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on July 12, 2018, published the CY 2019 Proposed Rule for the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (PFS). While in previous years regulations for the Quality Payment Program (QPP)...more
Earlier this month, CMS proposed changes to the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule and Quality Payment Program with the goal of “modernizing Medicare and restoring the doctor-patient relationship.” The proposed changes achieve...more
CMS recently announced that it wants to launch a new demonstration program, the Medicare Advantage Qualifying Payment Arrangement Incentive (MAQI) Demonstration. If approved and adopted as a demonstration project, the MAQI...more
CMS recently proposed modified policies for continued implementation of the Quality Payment Program (QPP) in the 2017 Proposed Rule. Among other things, the Proposed Rule provides flexibility for clinicians in the second QPP...more
Under CMS’s new Quality Payment Program, which will adjust Medicare Part B payments starting in 2019 based on data from this year, physicians and other eligible clinicians must qualify for one of two payment “tracks”, either...more
Payment models that seek to reward physicians, hospitals and other health care providers for achieving certain quality and cost-saving goals, or “value-based purchasing” (VBP), are not new to the healthcare landscape,...more
On June 20, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released a proposed rule entitled, "Medicare Program; CY 2018 Updates to the Quality Payment Program." CMS proposes changes for the second year (2018) of the...more
Healthcare is still buzzing about CMS’s Medicare physician two-track payment system, MACRA. The Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) is a complex pay-for-performance system based on traditional fee-for-service (FFS)....more
With all the talk of the Affordable Care Act’s uncertain future, it is easy to forget about the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (“MACRA”), a bipartisan law passed by Congress in 2015 to change the way physicians...more
The Trump administration is considering releasing a rule to ease the burden that small practices are facing in trying to comply with the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA), according to a recent...more
On November 14, 2016, CMS published its final rule implementing the physician payment provisions of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (“MACRA”). The rule became effective January 1, 2017. Data collection from...more
The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (“MACRA”) Final Rule published late last year implements CMS’ new payment approach for physicians and other Medicare Part B eligible clinicians under the Merit-Based Incentive...more
If you are a physician, mid-level provider, or work with those providers, then you have been bombarded with new acronyms for new programs and promises to remove older acronyms from your Medicare vocabulary. Medicare...more
Since I began writing this year-end review in 2013, there have been some common themes – a shift to pay for quality and away from fee-for service, much of which has been brought about by the Affordable Care Act (ACA): efforts...more