On July 15 the House Ways and Means Committee voted, unanimously, to make Medicare Advantage plans hand over a full list of everything they subject to prior authorization and report their denial data. CMS already forced the plans to decide expedited requests in 72 hours and standard ones in seven days starting this year. Plans now have to honor an approval once they give it, and they have to post

There's a study out in JAMA Network Open that should stop a lot of people mid-sentence. Researchers looked at roughly 16,000 Medicare fee-for-service patients, about 4,200 of them treated through hospital-at-home and the rest admitted the normal way. The hospital-at-home group did better on the things you'd hope. In-hospital mortality was 0.4% versus 3.6%. ED visits ran 8.8% versus 10%. ICU escala

On July 2, CMS dropped the CY 2027 outpatient payment proposed rule. It's a fat, sleepy document that most people will skim and forget. Buried in it is one line that should make every health system CFO put down their coffee. CMS wants to keep expanding site-neutral payment, and this year it goes after imaging without contrast done in hospital-owned outpatient departments. Same scan, same machine,