The Affordable Care Act (ACA) significantly increased reimbursement for community health clinics because more patients had health insurance. Now, with increased discussion of repealing the ACA, these facilities face an uncertain future.

Last week, CMS awarded approximately $100 million to 11 organizations to provide training and education about the Quality Payment Program in practices of 15 or fewer clinicians, according to a statement from CMS.

Former Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner delivered a keynote address at HIMSS 2017 where he claimed a repeal of the Affortable Care Act was unlikely. Legislation would be more directed at fixing problems with the ACA, he said, instead of the repeal-and-replace approach advocated by President Donald Trump.

In healthcare, social media is a much more serious affair than a few tweets and Instagram posts. The governance of such activity in healthcare is crucial in the protection of patient data and compliance with HIPAA. Nelly Jacobo, director of digital strategy at Cedars-Sinai, and Melody Smith Jones, manager of Connected Health at Perficient, discussed the four pillars of social media governance at HIMSS 2017.

Technology is prone to breaking from time to time but when the technology within a medical device fails, lives are at risk. Parker Waichman LLP, a law firm protecting patients injured by medical devices, have commented on the safety concerns involving morcellators and duodenoscopes. These comments ask regulators to enforce reporting of medical devices injuries.

House Speaker Paul Ryan promised a new plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act is coming after the Presidents Day recess in Congress, but there are still disagreements between House Republicans on several key points of their own legislation.

Seema Verma, MPH, President Donald Trump’s pick to run CMS, faced questions about mandatory payment models, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and providers’ ability to take on risk-based arrangements in her confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee.

SpectraMedix, a company specializing in transitioning hospitals to to value-based payment models, has developed a national advisory council dealing with the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA). This council, made up of healthcare policy and IT experts, will assist the industry implement Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) and Alternative Payment Model (APM) tracks.