The goal of the opioid epidemic response plan announced by President Donald Trump will be to cut opioid prescriptions by 33 percent within three years, according to POLITICO.

The legislation would have let nurse practitioners, certified registered nurse anesthetists and clinical nurse specialists perform and supervise medical imaging procedures, according to the American Society of Radiologic Technologists (ASRT).

UnitedHealth Group has dropped its bid to acquire the ambulatory services unit of Envision Healthcare and isn’t interested in participating in any deals to scoop up parts or all of the company, according to Bloomberg.

Easing clinician burden under the payment tracks implemented as part of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) will be a priority for CMS in this year’s rulemaking, according to Kate Goodrich, MD, the agency’s chief medical officer. What won’t be changing, however, is requiring providers to meet the 2015 edition of certified electronic health record technology (CHERT) standards.

Fight Colorectal Cancer, a patient advocacy group first founded in 2005, is sending representatives to Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., for the 12th straight year to ask lawmakers to support “the prevention, detection and treatment of colorectal cancer.” This year, the group is sending 150 advocates from the United States and Puerto Rico.

The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission has released its March 2018 report for Congress, which includes its recommendation to eliminate the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) after only a one year of clinician reporting to the program.

It has become standard practice over the years for imaging providers to maintain data for at least five years, but according to an article published in the Journal of the American College of Radiology, perhaps that data should be kept indefinitely. 

The biggest problem we have as practice administrators or physicians is that we see management reports illustrating the end result and process failures contributing to revenue declines are not evident. As long as we, as an industry, insist on the lowest price, we will continue to get what we pay for in terms of over-automation and failures of process controls.