NextGen Healthcare’s Post

Transcript

This week, as President Trump begins his second term in office, many physician groups are probably wondering how the change in administrations will impact different health care policy issues and ultimately their practices. And while today there are still a lot of unknowns and uncertainty in this regard, here are a few key issues to keep an eye on #1 Medicare physician payment, both in terms of 2025 payment rates, which unfortunately CMS just cut by almost 3%. See if Congress can provide some relief there, but also long term permanent reforms. It's been a decade since Congress. Ask the macro law and pretty much every stakeholder on this issue is now unhappy that we're back in the pre Macra doc fix era of annual payment cuts that require action by Congress. There is also a widely held consensus that MIPS is way too complicated, too burdensome, and not a great measure of value. So we'll see what happens. But there's a real possibility for both 2025 and long term reforms #2 certified EHR technology compliance requirements. Now the big thing the Biden administration did here is roll out a new approach for OCD. HR certification program that requires each R companies and providers to update their systems every year, as opposed to the previous approach going back to the old Meaningful Use days that required an update every few years. In 2023, HHS finalized new HR requirements for 2025 and 2026, and then last summer they proposed updates for 27 and 28. But because they never finalized the second rule, it now falls to the incoming Trump administration to decide whether to stick with these annual updates or go in a different direction. 3rd, consider price transparency and surprise billing requirements. This was a major focus in the late stages of the first Trump administration, and because they still never fully implemented and enforced the price transparency and good faith cost estimate rules, I'd expect some action on those issues. Also expect new policies and maybe rules on cybersecurity and AI. And you're going to want to consider the impact other healthcare system reforms targeting pharma PBMS or health insurers might have. You know, even if big regulatory changes in these areas have literally no direct. Impact on physician groups. Everything in Healthcare is connected in some way, and there's always going to be some level of downstream impact on frontline providers, even if that comes years in the future. So it's going to be important to watch what if confirmed new HHS Secretary Robert F Kennedy Junior, the new Department of Government efficiency, and the new Republican Congress do in these other areas.