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
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has released the calendar year (CY) 2025 Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) and Ambulatory Surgical Center (ASC) Payment System Final Rule with comment...more
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
News Briefs - Telehealth Access Challenged as Internet Subsidy Program Ends - More than 23 million low-income households -- urban, suburban, rural, and tribal -- are enrolled in the federal discount program Congress created...more
On August 1, 2023, CMS issued its annual Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) and Long-Term Care Hospital Prospective Payment System (LTCH PPS) Final Rule for FY 2024 (the Final Rule). In the Final Rule, CMS,...more
Illinois passed S.B. 1913, which requires Medicaid FFS and Medicaid managed care plans to provide coverage of mental health services, substance use disorder treatment, and ‘behavioral telehealth services’. Requires Medicaid...more
The Biden Administration announced on Jan. 30, 2023, its intent to end the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE) on May 11, 2023. Fortunately, the 2023 Consolidated Appropriations Act (CAA) extends certain key telehealth...more
In December 2020 the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC) issued the report: Insights on Telehealth Use and Program Integrity Risks Across Selected Health Care Programs During the Pandemic. To better understand...more
On November 1, 2022, CMS published a final rule to update the payment policies, payment rates, and other provisions for services furnished under the Medicare Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) and the Ambulatory...more
As we covered in a prior Telehealth Update, many of the flexibilities upon which telehealth providers have come to rely in recent years are tied to the federal Public Health Emergency related to the COVID-19 pandemic (the...more
Last week saw a lot of great news in the world of telehealth. On March 15, President Biden signed into law H.R. 2471, the “Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022”, which extends many of the Medicare telehealth flexibilities...more
Last week, HHS launched the application for both Provider Relief Fund (PRF) Phase 4 and American Rescue Plan (ARP) Rural payments. As described in the September 13, 2021 Health Headlines, HHS made $25.5 billion in new funding...more
On September 10, the Biden-Harris Administration, in conjunction with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), announced that $25.5 billion in relief funds will be distributed to healthcare providers through the...more
On March 11, 2021, President Biden signed into law the American Rescue Plan Act, a $1.9 trillion package to provide relief related to the COVID-19 public health emergency. The final legislation, which passed with support from...more
On March 6, 2021, the U.S. Senate narrowly passed H.R. 1319, the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, by a 50-49 vote, along entirely partisan lines. Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) missed the vote after joining with all Republicans on...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
[co-authors: Mara McDermott and Katie Waldo, McDermott+Consultants] This report from McDermott Will & Emery and McDermott+Consulting provides a detailed analysis of the latest Provider Relief Fund (PRF) distributions,...more
On August 11, 2020, the CMS Innovation Center, the office within HHS with authority to create and test healthcare payment systems, announced a new payment model – the Community Health Access and Rural Transformation (CHART)...more
Below is Alston & Bird’s Health Care Week in Review, which provides a synopsis of the latest news in healthcare regulations, notices, and guidance; federal legislation and congressional committee action; reports, studies, and...more
On August 3, 2020, President Trump signed the “Executive Order on Improving Rural Health and Telehealth Access” (the Executive Order). The Executive Order directed the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services...more
On July 10, 2020, HHS announced over $4 billion in additional relief funding for certain hospitals impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The new round includes payments of approximately $3 billion to safety net hospitals and...more
In recent days, the federal government has taken two significant steps to increase healthcare funding to assist providers in responding to the medical and economic consequences of the novel coronavirus pandemic. $100 Billion...more
On May 3, 2019, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”) published a comprehensive proposed rule (“Proposed Rule”) to revise the Medicare payment structure for inpatient prospective payment systems (“IPPS”)...more
In an opinion issued December 27, 2018, a Federal District Court ruled that the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) exceeded its authority by reducing Part B drug reimbursement to certain hospitals in the 340B drug...more
On April 2, 2018, CMS issued updated guidance related to the dramatic Medicare payment reductions that went into effect this year for certain 340B hospitals. The guidance explains the planned application of the payment cuts...more