K&L Gates Triage: An Insider’s Perspective on the Health Care Debate in Washington, DC
On January 17, 2024, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued the CMS Interoperability and Prior Authorization final rule (Final Rule) (fact sheet, CMS’ interoperability website), which aims to improve prior...more
Last week CMS issued its final rule “CMS Interoperability and Prior Authorization” (CMS-0057-F), unchanged from its proposed rule in 2022, which addresses prior authorizations. Prior authorization, a “utilization management”...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
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is launching new value-based programs with great fervor as a central strategy to bend the healthcare cost curve. Value-based reimbursement models linked to achieving the...more
The Trump Administration on Feb. 12 released its Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 budget request, titled "An American Budget." Unlike last year's budget, which was released in late May, the release of this budget conforms to the typical...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
Happy New Year!?! 2017 was an eventful year for health care, and now we can all sit back and relax with very little concern that major health policy will be on the table in 2018. Right? Why must Speaker Ryan ruin our...more
On November 2, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released the final rule implementing policies for Year 2 (2018) of the Quality Payment Program established under the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization...more
US-CERT Warns of New Ransomware: Bad Rabbit - The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) is warning companies in the U.S. about a new ransomware dubbed “Bad Rabbit.” US-CERT stated it has received multiple...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
On October 14, 2016, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released its final rule (the “Final Rule”) implementing the Medicare Access and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) Authorization Act of 2015...more
Since the Affordable Care Act was enacted, many providers have been shifting away from traditional fee-for-service, volume-based reimbursement models to payment mechanisms that take a data-driven approach to managing patients...more
Continuing our blog series on CMS’s massive proposed rule for the implementation of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA), we dedicate this post to examining the Advance Payment Model (APM)...more
The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) proposes a new approach, with new branding labels, to paying clinicians for the value and the quality of care that they provide by replacing a patchwork of existing...more
While Medicare’s path toward pay for performance (P4P) has evolved over time, 2015 is proving to be a landmark year. July marked the 50th anniversary of the Medicare program. And in self-described “historic announcements”...more
CMS would like your help in developing the replacement to the Sustainable Growth Rate adjustment (SGR). But you need to act quickly because CMS' cutoff date for your suggestions is October 31, 2015....more
On September 28, 2015, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) published a Request for Information (RFI) seeking stakeholder comments related to innovative physician payment models required by the Medicare Access...more
Medicare continues to transition its primary physician payment methodology from a traditional fee-for-service model into a quality and value-based model. Recently, the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015...more