May 20, 2024 - The Senate Finance Committee recently released a white paper outlining where it sees opportunities to reform Medicare physician payment to improve the delivery of chronic care and improve the Physician Fee Schedule’s value to clinicians and beneficiaries. Senators identified changes to Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) through the Physician Fee...

May 6, 2024 - Hospital profitability has hit a snag after a relatively strong first quarter, according to the latest data from healthcare consulting firm Kaufman Hall. The April 2024 “National Hospital Flash Report” reports a 0.2 percentage point drop in Kaufman Hall’s calendar-year-to-date operating margin index. The index came in at 3.9% in...

May 2, 2024 - There has been a large focus on how market consolidation among hospitals and health systems, including physician practice acquisitions, affects competition, pricing, and access to care. However, new data from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) shows that health payers are actually more consolidated than health systems. The data...

April 23, 2024 - A new final rule from CMS establishes minimum staffing standards for nursing homes at a national level for the first time in history. The rule states that nursing homes participating in Medicare and Medicaid must provide residents with a minimum of 3.48 hours of nursing care per day. The new staffing standard includes at least 0.55 hours of care...