Read today’s Kaiser Health News
In other news:
About health insurance/insurers
CMS Cuts Medicaid Funding For Some Non-Medical In-Home Services: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced Thursday that it would no longer approve funding for some services previously covered by state section 1115 demonstrations, including some in-home non-medical services.
In a letter addressed to state Medicaid directors, CMS stated that the organization “did not anticipate” approving new federal funding for designated state health programs (DSHP) and designated state investment programs (DSIP) under section 1115 demonstration authority.
Among the examples of expenditures that would not be approved moving forward, CMS cited $241 million for a program in New York dedicated to non-medical in-home services, including housekeeping.
CMS drops 5 proposed payment rules for 2026: 25 things to know A great review of the proposed changes across provider types.
About hospitals and healthcare systems
Hospital M&A plummets amid market volatility: Hospital mergers and acquisitions dropped in the first quarter as the economic and political climate changed, according to Kaufman Hall’s “M&A Quarterly Activity Report: Q1 2025.”
There were five transactions in the first quarter and no mega-mergers where the smaller party had $1 billion revenue or more. Comparatively, the first quarter of 2024 had 20 transactions and the first quarter of 2020 had 29.
CMS weighs dropping some quality measures: What to know: The agency outlined the changes April 11 as part of its 2026 proposed rule for the Medicare payment systems that cover inpatient and long-term care hospitals.
Under the hospital inpatient quality reporting program, hospitals that fail to meet requirements or submit quality data face a 25% reduction in their annual payment update.
The agency has proposed modifying four current quality measures:
Total hip arthroplasty/Total knee arthroplasty complication rate and 30-day stroke mortality rate: CMS is proposing to include Medicare Advantage patients, shortening the performance period from three to two years, and revising the risk adjustment methodology for both measures (including a refinement for stroke severity in the latter).
Hybrid, hospitalwide readmission and mortality measures: CMS is proposing allowing up to two missing lab results and two missing vital signs per case, and reducing the submission thresholds for core clinical data elements and linking variables to 70% of discharges for both hybrid measures.
About the public’s health
Not Just Measles”: Whooping Cough Cases Are Soaring as Vaccine Rates Decline:
Reporting Highlights
Vaccine Hesitancy: Texas’ measles outbreak has been blamed on vaccine hesitancy. But parents are not getting their children other vaccines as well.
Not Just Measles: Vaccine rates for other childhood diseases have fallen, contributing to rising cases of whooping cough and other illnesses.
Government Failure: The Trump administration’s cuts to public health jobs and funding make it harder for agencies to fight outbreaks and prevent disease with vaccines.
About healthcare personnel
Physician pay growth stalls: Physicians are seeing slower pay growth in the last year amid economic uncertainty, according to Medscape’s “Physician Compensation Report 2025.”
The company surveyed 7,322 physicians across 29 specialties from Oct. 3, 2024 to Jan. 15, 2025, and found compensation increased around 3.6% on average for physicians, which was the lowest growth rate since 2011 when Medscape first began reporting compensation.
Pay gains were around 1.4% for primary care physicians, hitting $281,000 last year, and 1% for specialists, hitting $398,000. Pay growth was the lowest since 2021 at the height of the pandemic. The pay figures cover base salary, incentive bonus and other income including profit-sharing.
The state of the physician workforce in 2025 A nice summary of trends.