DOGE

Nearly 200,000 federal workers fired on Valentine’s Day, February 15, 2025

Mass layoffs rankle CMS, HHS, CDC in what the Trump administration is characterizing as frivolous spending.

HHS has approximately 80,000 employees. According to Stat, nearly 5,200 HHS workers were notified that they would be fired, including 1,300 who worked at the Center for Disease Prevention and Control.

It is unknown how many of the Center of Medicare & Medicaid Services’ 6,000 employees were affected.

A Feb. 11 executive order gave further details on how DOGE would alter the federal workforce. It requires every federal agency to hire “no more than one employee for every four employees that depart.”

Each agency must also develop a “data-driven” plan with a DOGE team lead, ensuring vacancies are not filled if the DOGE team lead deems the position unnecessary.

“Staffing cuts of the level described in the President’s executive order will bring about a cascade of consequences for Medicare, Medicaid and other publicly-supported coverage programs—placing at risk the people who rely on those programs for coverage, including children, families, seniors, veterans and people with disabilities,” said Margaret Murray, CEO for the Association for Community Affiliated Plans (ACAP).

Most people think of nursing homes as providing long-term, end-of-life care, but many nursing facilities also provide short-term care, such as rehabilitative and therapy services, which is then reimbursed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) under Medicare Part A.

But CMS does not necessarily make Medicare reimbursements without any questions. In fact, the government will audit nursing facilities to make sure reimbursements are properly aligned with services rendered. And when the paperwork doesn’t exactly correspond with the payment, the government will seek to recover what it views as improper reimbursements.

Recovery auditors typically look for discrepancies in the nursing facility’s reimbursement requests. And while recovery audit decisions are generally appealable, it’s better to avoid an audit rather than necessitate an appeal. Fortunately, there are a few proactive steps to take prior to finalizing billing that may help avoid audits—or allow a facility to successfully weather closer scrutiny.

REGULATORY

Healthcare lobbying 2025: top policy issues for hospitals, payers, docs, and tech

2025 promises to be a year of particular policy upheaval, and few know that better than healthcare associations caught in the crossroads of funding battles, regulatory upheaval and intense public scrutiny.

Large swaths of the industry are looking to Congress and the newly active Trump administration for relief from macroeconomic pain points like inflation or more novel developments like tariffs.

As Republican lawmakers begin poring over spending lines to tackle the deficit and offset promised tax cuts ahead of March’s budget reconciliation, healthcare lobbyists are hoping they’ll be able to extend favorable spending policies and fend off potential program cuts.

BUILD A WINNING DEFENSE: CASE SUMMARY

Excelas helps organizations respond accurately and quickly to claims and litigation brought against them

Partnering with attorneys, health care organizations, and insurance companies since 1995, Excelas provides medical legal analyses and tools for building winning defense strategies. When expertise, accuracy, reliability, and on-time delivery count, you can count on Excelas.

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