The specialty has seen a decline in available MIPS metrics in recent years, as the feds have "topped out" those with extremely high national performance, experts said. 

Hospitals required by state laws to offer healthcare workers flu shots can expect significantly reduced flu and pneumonia mortality compared with hospitals in states forgoing such mandates.

CMS had originally planned to kick off the mandatory bundled-payment effort in July, but will now punt the go-live date to Jan. 1, 2022. 

Is your organization ready to meet the new federal requirements on hospital price transparency? The policy is set to go live on New Year’s Day. 

The revised system gives states greater leeway than they’ve had to cut value-based purchasing deals with pharma companies on innovative but expensive drugs.

Lawmakers also finalized a long-discussed ban on surprise medical bills and pushed back the radiation oncology payment model's go-live date.

Congress approved the measure on Dec. 21, targeting out-of-network radiology care with a new arbitration process. 

Lawmakers are pushing to include the measure in an end-of-year legislative package, but practice leaders are worried they're moving too fast.