The Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) and Ambulatory Surgical Center (ASC) Proposed Rule for the 2026 fiscal year has been released.

Tucked inside the Proposed Rule from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is the agency’s recommendation to phase out the Inpatient-Only List (IPO) over the course of the next three years.

Reporting the lead story on this development during the next edition of Monitor Mondays will be longtime panelist Ronald Hirsch, MD.

The weekly broadcast will also include these instantly recognizable features:

• Risky Business: Healthcare attorney David Glaser, shareholder in the law offices of Fredrikson & Byron, will join the broadcast with his trademark segment.

• Legislative Update: Cate Brantley, senior healthcare government affairs analyst for Zelis, will report on the news happening at the intersection of healthcare and congressional action.

It’s a Medicaid Madness mess.

For many years, Medicaid has been providing support for America’s most vulnerable populations. But now, Medicaid finds itself as a pawn, being manipulated for political gain between two opposing forces: those who view the program as a means to an end to reduce government spending, and those who hold the opposite point of view.

Who will be the winners and losers? During the next live edition of the venerated Monitor Mondays, senior healthcare consultant Dennis Jones will report on how hospitals can save money in the face of the inevitable Medicaid cuts.

Jones, senior director of revenue cycle at Jefferson Health, was among the first of hand-picked subject-matter experts heard nearly 14 years ago on the weekly Internet broadcast produced by RACmonitor.

The Monday’s broadcast will also include these instantly recognizable features:

• Monday Rounds: Ronald Hirsch, MD, vice president of R1 RCM, will be making his Monday Rounds.

• The RAC Report: Healthcare attorney Knicole Emanuel, partner at the law firm of Nelson Mullins, will report the latest news about auditors.

• Risky Business: Sitting in for healthcare attorney David Glaser will be attorney Marguarite Ahman, a shareholder in the law offices of Fredrikson & Byron.

• Legislative Update: Matthew Albright, chief legislative affairs analyst for Zelis, will report on the news happening at the intersection of healthcare and congressional action.

Looking back and looking ahead, we must reckon with a major shift in America’s judicial landscape: the elimination of the so-called Chevron Deference. Last year, at about this same time, physician and attorney Dr. John K. Hall was the special guest here on Monitor Mondays, and he began his segment explaining the legal concept.

Now, more than a year after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision overturning 40 years of judicial precedent and upending statutory construction and enforcement, we must ask, has anything really changed?

Dr. Hall will return to examine the changes – or maybe lack of changes – and what we might still expect regarding legal challenges to executive actions.

The venerable broadcast will also include these instantly recognizable features:

• Monday Rounds: Ronald Hirsch, MD, vice president of R1 RCM, will be making his Monday Rounds.

• The RAC Report: Healthcare attorney Knicole Emanuel, partner at the law firm of Nelson Mullins, will report the latest news about auditors.

• Risky Business: Healthcare attorney David Glaser, shareholder in the law offices of Fredrikson & Byron, will join the broadcast with his trademark segment.

• Legislative Update: Adam Brenman, senior regulatory affairs analyst for Zelis, will report on the news happening at the intersection of healthcare and congressional action.

The Transparency in Coverage (TiC) Final Rule represents one of the most significant regulatory shifts in healthcare pricing since the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

During the next live edition of Monitor Mondays, senior healthcare analyst Frank Cohen will walk you and your team through the comprehensive labyrinth of changes.

Recent enforcement developments, including President Trump’s Executive Order 14221, directing actual hospital price disclosure within 90 days, also signal an intensified regulatory environment requiring proactive compliance strategies.

The venerable broadcast will also include these instantly recognizable features:

• Monday Rounds: Ronald Hirsch, MD, vice president of R1 RCM, will be making his Monday Rounds.

• The RAC Report: Healthcare attorney Knicole Emanuel, partner at the law firm of Nelson Mullins, will report the latest news about auditors.

• Risky Business: Healthcare attorney David Glaser, shareholder in the law offices of Fredrikson & Byron, will join the broadcast with his trademark segment.

• Legislative Update: Moesha Baptiste, intern regulatory analyst for Zelis, will report on the news happening at the intersection of healthcare and congressional action.

Call it a trifecta, triumvirate, or the Triple Crown of 2025.

“Fraud, waste, and abuse” is the current triple-negative buzzword in America’s lexicon. And it’s being used to describe lots of things. But when that phrase is used by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG), what does it actually mean?

You’ll learn during the next live edition of Monitor Mondays.

That’s when senior healthcare consultant Dr. Drew Updike – the broadcast’s special guest – will report on how the Acting HHS Inspector General (IG) Juliet Hodgkins used that phrase when she recently posted an online promotion in support of the OIG Spring Semiannual report to Congress.

The venerable broadcast will also include these instantly recognizable features:

• Monday Rounds: Ronald Hirsch, MD, vice president of R1 RCM, will be making his Monday Rounds.

• The RAC Report: Healthcare attorney Knicole Emanuel, partner at the law firm of Nelson Mullins, will report the latest news about auditors.

• Risky Business: Healthcare attorney David Glaser, shareholder in the law offices of Fredrikson & Byron, will join the broadcast with his trademark segment.

• Legislative Update: Matthew Albright, chief legislative government affairs analyst for Zelis, will report on the news happening at the intersection of healthcare and congressional action.

Clinical denials by payers for sepsis continues. The problem: the definition of the enigmatic condition does not meet their propriety definitions.
Enter Dr. James Kennedy, who will be the special guest during the next live edition of the long-running Monitor Mondays broadcast. Dr. Kennedy will report on his recent conversations with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics, in which the agency described its protocols in amending the Index and Table to fit new diseases and terminology.
The venerable broadcast will also include these instantly recognizable features:

• Monday Rounds: Ronald Hirsch, MD, vice president of R1 RCM, will be making his Monday Rounds.

• The RAC Report: Healthcare attorney Knicole Emanuel, partner at the law firm of Nelson Mullins, will report the latest news about auditors.

• Risky Business: Healthcare attorney David Glaser, shareholder in the law offices of Fredrikson & Byron, will join the broadcast with his trademark segment.

• Legislative Update: Adam Brenman, senior healthcare government affairs analyst for Zelis, will report on the news happening at the intersection of healthcare and congressional action.

The nation’s Medicaid program has seen better days. Recently, the federal government’s program to provide healthcare coverage to America’s low-income and vulnerable citizens was used as a bargaining chip as congressional Republicans were in the throes of budget negotiations, facing the daunting task to pass what President Trump calls his “big, beautiful bill:” a package of tax breaks disproportionately favoring the wealthy and spending cuts. The bill, which last week passed in the U.S. House of Representatives, is now making its way through the Senate.
Then there was the announcement this midweek that the Deputy Administrator and Director of the Center for Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) Services, Drew Synder, was resigning from the federal agency.
Reporting on these developing stories during the next live edition of the long-running Internet broadcast Monitor Mondays will be Drew Updike, MD.
The venerable broadcast will also include these instantly recognizable features:

• Monday Rounds: Ronald Hirsch, MD, vice president of R1 RCM, will be making his Monday Rounds.

• The RAC Report: Healthcare attorney Knicole Emanuel, partner at the law firm of Nelson Mullins, will report the latest news about auditors.

• Risky Business: Healthcare attorney David Glaser, shareholder in the law offices of Fredrikson & Byron, will join the broadcast with his trademark segment.

• Legislative Update: Cate Brantley, senior healthcare government affairs analyst for Zelis, will report on the news happening at the intersection of healthcare and congressional action.

During the next edition of Monitor Mondays, famed whistleblower attorney Mary Inman, partner at Whistleblower Law, will provide an update on a whistleblower case that some consider “beyond bad.”

You’ll learn why a Texas rheumatologist who was sentenced to 10 years in prison and three years of supervised release was ordered to forfeit more than $28 million, plus 13 real-estate properties, a jet, and a Maserati GranTurismo sports car.

Inman, long considered one of the nation’s foremost whistleblower attorneys, will be the program’s special guest during the next live edition of the venerable Internet broadcast, coming up at 10 a.m. EST on Monday, June 2, 2025.

The long-running broadcast will also include these instantly recognizable features:

• Monday Rounds: Ronald Hirsch, MD, vice president of R1 RCM, will be making his Monday Rounds.
  
  
• The RAC Report: Healthcare attorney Knicole Emanuel, partner at the law firm of Nelson Mullins, will report the latest news about auditors.
  
  
• Risky Business: Healthcare attorney David Glaser, shareholder in the law offices of Fredrikson & Byron, will join the broadcast with his trademark segment.
  
  
• Field Report: Drew Updike will continue his reporting on efforts by the Trump Administration to intervene in healthcare issues – namely the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Form 64 related to migrants and Medicaid.

Welcome to a strange new world.

Recent tariffs announced by the Trump Administration are likely to impact drug manufacturing, since many drug components are produced outside the U.S., in nations such as in India, giving rise to state laws. Many states limit overseas involvement relative to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Florida, for example, prohibits the offshoring of certain patient data, requiring such storage to be within the U.S.

Responding to this emerging crisis, the producers of RACmonitor and Monitor Mondays have invited Lexi Morrison, director of operations at MedPharma, to be the program’s special guest during the next live edition of the venerable Internet broadcast, coming up at 10 a.m. EST on Monday, May 19.

The long-running broadcast will also include these instantly recognizable features:

• Monday Rounds: Ronald Hirsch, MD, vice president of R1 RCM, will be making his Monday Rounds.

• The RAC Report: Healthcare attorney Knicole Emanuel, partner at the law firm of Nelson Mullins, will report the latest news about auditors.

• Risky Business: Healthcare attorney David Glaser, shareholder in the law offices of Fredrikson & Byron, will join the broadcast with his trademark segment.

• Legislative Update: Adam Brenman, senior government affairs analyst for Zelis, will report on the news happening at the intersection of healthcare and congressional action.

On the surface, it was the perfect scam: kickbacks to docs in exchange for public speaking engagements, in order to induce them to prescribe drugs.

That’s apparently what Gilead Sciences thought.

But a whistleblower blew the whistle, and Gilead admitted to paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to high prescribers of their HIV drugs to serve as speakers at programs at luxury restaurants.

Famed whistleblower attorney Mary Inman, partner at Whistleblowers Partners, LLP, will report the savory details during the new live edition of Monitor Mondays, coming up at 10 a.m. EST on Monday, May 12.

The long-running broadcast will also include these instantly recognizable features:

• Monday Rounds: Ronald Hirsch, MD, vice president of R1 RCM, will be making his Monday Rounds.

• The RAC Report: Healthcare attorney Knicole Emanuel, partner at the law firm of Nelson Mullins, will report the latest news about auditors.

• Risky Business: Healthcare attorney David Glaser, shareholder in the law offices of Fredrikson & Byron, will join the broadcast with his trademark segment.

• Legislative Update: Folan Houston, assistant general counsel for Zelis, will report on the news at the intersection of healthcare and congressional action.

• Field Report: Dr. Drew Updike continues his reporting on recent efforts by the Trump Administration to prevent providers from undertaking gender-affirming treatments for America’s LGBTQ+ population.