President Obama has unveiled his $3.9 trillion fiscal year 2015 budget proposal, which allocates $77.1 billion to support the Department of Health & Human Services and $1.8 billion for health IT incentive payments.

House Republicans may tie passing a permanent repeal of the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula to delaying the Affordable Care Act (ACA) individual mandate on buying health insurance.

Current requirements for when insurers must tell physician practices that a patient’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) insurance exchange purchased health plan is in danger of being cancelled could leave doctors unreimbursed for their services warned more than 80 state and national organizations in a letter to CMS.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT have released additional draft quality measures under their Children’s Measures project.

U.S. Senators Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Deb Fisher (R-Neb.) have introduced legislation that would require CMS to change its new guidelines around when a Medicare patient hospital stay is judged to be an inpatient stay.

On the heels of an indictment that accused a former Texas healthcare executive of collecting $800,000 in EHR incentive payments under false pretenses, lawmakers from the House Committee on Energy and Commerce are looking for answers from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of Inspector General (OIG) on why fraud is happening within the program.

In a continuing Health Affairs series, Catalyst for Payment Reform Executive Director Suzanne Delbanco digs into the evidence for Pay-for-Performance (often called P4P) as a payment system that may potentially reduce overall health care costs.According to Delbanco, pay-for-performance may indeed be useful in shifting providers toward new payment systems because it only has an upside. You get a bonus if you improve certain quality measures and you earn the same if you don't.However, she warns that the lack of financial risk in P4P may limit its usefulness. Research also has not shown that it can lower costs, a key purpose of new payment systems. Finally, it may encourage physicians to focus on a narrow band of measurable quality measures to the detriment of the overall quality of the care the patient receives.Delbanco theorizes that the true value of P4P may be as a stepping stone to shared-risk arrangements with payors.

The many regulatory, reimbursement and policy changes related to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act are undoubtedly changing the business climate for physicians. In a feature with video, the New York Times contrasts the practices of two Kentucky primary care doctors — Sven Jonsson, M.D., and Tracy Ragland, M.D. — to illustrate the economic pressure pushing many sole practitioners into employment by large health care networks.