Government Archives - HIT Leaders and News

CMS Draws a Harder Line on Medicare Advantage

Jason Free — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 21:13:21 +0000

The latest CMS rate notice is easy to misread. On paper, the agency is still increasing payments to Medicare Advantage plans in 2027. In substance, it is drawing a sharper distinction between legitimate clinical risk and revenue built on documentation tactics that have long inflated the program’s economics.

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A Cleaner Chain of Command for Health IT

Jason Free — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 20:56:45 +0000

Administrative reshuffles inside HHS usually land as management trivia. This one does not. The department’s March 31, 2026 decision to return enterprise technology, data, and AI leadership to the Office of the Chief Information Officer while restoring the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology to a narrower health IT policy role arrives at a point when governance failures are no longer abstract.

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The CMS Rule That Finally Targets the Paperwork Nobody Fixed

Jason Free — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 11:47:44 +0000

The latest move from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will be easy to underestimate because it sounds so administrative. The newly finalized health care claims attachments rule deals with documentation, transaction standards, and electronic signatures, not a flashy care model or a breakthrough therapy. Yet it may prove to be one of the more important healthcare modernization actions in years precisely because it aims at a part of the system that has remained stubbornly primitive long after the industry declared itself digital.

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When Fraud Reaches the Exam Room

Jason Free — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 11:01:25 +0000

The federal case against Anchorage rheumatologist Claribel Tan should not be read as a routine fraud prosecution with unusually vivid facts. In a March 17 sentencing release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Alaska, the Department of Justice said the scheme involved more than $12.5 million in health care fraud, more than $4.2 million in tax loss, and conduct that stretched across 15 years. What makes the case editorially important is not only the money. It is the allegation that the fraud was built into treatment itself.

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CMS Rule Phases Out Fax Machines and Snail Mail

Jason Free — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 18:58:20 +0000

The latest administrative simplification rule from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services may sound like a narrow technical update, but in its final rule fact sheet the agency says it creates the first HIPAA-adopted standards for health care claims attachments and electronic signatures. That makes the policy less about retiring fax machines than about fixing one of healthcare’s oldest operational failures: the messy, manual handoff between clinical documentation and payment.

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Caregiver AI Must Earn Its Place in the Home

Jason Free — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 11:21:34 +0000

The launch of the Caregiver AI Prize Competition by the Administration for Community Living under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services signals a policy shift that matters beyond a single challenge. Federal leaders are no longer treating caregiving technology as a consumer convenience category. The competition frames AI as a potential layer of national caregiving infrastructure, with explicit expectations around responsible use and harm prevention. That framing raises the bar for what counts as a viable solution in the home.

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HHS Adds Former U.S. Attorney for Fraud Efforts

Jason Free — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 12:35:15 +0000

The appointment of former U.S. Attorney Scott Brady to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of General Counsel signals a sharp escalation in the agency’s fraud enforcement strategy. Joining General Counsel Mike Stuart, himself a former federal prosecutor, Brady enters HHS amid what leadership calls the most aggressive anti-fraud campaign in the agency’s history. The move reflects a strategic posture shift: from administrative oversight to criminal accountability.

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United States Completes WHO Withdrawal

Jason Free — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 11:19:50 +0000

The finalization of the United States' withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) marks a seismic shift in global health governance, one that exposes critical uncertainties for healthcare leaders, public health systems, and the infrastructure supporting pandemic readiness. While federal leadership characterized the move as a necessary correction to institutional failure, the long-term implications for operational coordination, global surveillance, and regulatory alignment remain unresolved.

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Trump’s Healthcare Plan Forces a New Reckoning on Price Transparency

Jason Free — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 15:33:36 +0000

The healthcare policy landscape in the United States has again shifted with the unveiling of former President Donald Trump’s proposed Great Healthcare Plan. While the political context surrounding the proposal may spark predictable partisan reactions, the plan itself raises a deeper, more systemic challenge: how far can, and should, price transparency, consumer-directed benefits, and direct subsidies go in reshaping how healthcare is purchased, priced, and governed?

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Kaiser Permanente Settlement Highlights Breakdown in Medicare Advantage Risk Practices

Jason Free — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 14:18:47 +0000

The recent $556 million settlement by Kaiser Permanente affiliates over inflated Medicare Advantage payments underscores a persistent and unaddressed compliance risk embedded within the risk adjustment ecosystem. The allegations point to systemic pressure on physicians to append diagnoses not considered during patient encounters, practices that, if validated, reveal how financial incentives tied to coding can distort clinical records and degrade payer trust.

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