The tax cuts and code changes proposed by Republicans in the U.S. House include eliminating the student loan interest deduction, which is widely used by recent medical school graduates and other healthcare workers.

Additional cuts to what CMS pays to hospital-owned off-campus facilities were finalized in the Physician Fee Schedule rule for 2018, though the reductions were lower than what the agency had originally proposed.

CMS has finalized the rule for the second year of Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act’s (MACRA) Quality Payment Program (QPP), raising the low-volume threshold for the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) but not allowing clinicians the option to participate if they don’t meet the minimum requirements.

Management consultant Jorge Perez has purchased nearly 20 rural hospitals in Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Florida and other states and managed to save them from closing. His secret, however, appears to involve billing insurance companies for laboratory work not performed at those hospitals.

CMS released its final hospital outpatient prospective payment system (OPPS) rule for 2018, which included a significant cut to drug payments to hospitals which use the 340B drug discount program. The result was the quick threat of a lawsuit from three major medical groups.

Alert fatigue for physicians has the potential to cause negative outcomes—but so does overriding those alerts. In a study published in Journal of American Medical Informatics Association, researchers evaluate the effects of overriding clinical decision support alerts.

The top Democrats on the Senate’s finance and health committees have outlined 51 criteria for judging President Donald Trump’s next nominee to run HHS, with many of their priorities going against the policies touted by Trump and former HHS Secretary Tom Price, MD.

New Hyde Park, New York-based Northwell Health, the largest hospital system in the state, has named Michele Cusack, MBA, its new CFO and senior vice president, and appointed Richard Miller, MBA, as executive vice president and chief business strategy officer.