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Changing the way it does business, Medicare on Friday unveiled a far-reaching overhaul of how it pays doctors and other clinicians. The goal is to reward quality, penalize poor performance, and avoid paying piecemeal for services. Whether it succeeds or fails, it's one of the biggest changes in Medicare's 50-year history. (10/14)

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released the highly anticipated rule, which introduces new bonuses and penalties tied to performance for 712,000 doctors and other clinicians starting in 2019. The new bonuses and penalties would be paid or imposed depending on how well doctors do on measures of quality, electronic health records and managing costs. Doctors can also enter Medicare contracts that include quality and cost-control incentives and earn bonuses. (Evans, 10/14)

Nearly a third of physicians could be exempt from Medicare's new Merit-based Incentive Payment System under a final rule the CMS issued Friday for implementing the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act. The CMS also signaled it would broaden the opportunities for physicians to participate in alternative models that make them eligible for bigger rate increases and bonuses. (Dickson, Muchmore and Livingston, 10/14)

The Obama administration on Friday rolled out its long-awaited rules for shifting how Medicare pays doctors, implementing changes made by a bipartisan law Congress passed last year. The changes are part of the administration’s larger effort to shift healthcare payments away the traditional system of paying doctors a fee for each test or procedure provided, and toward a system that rewards doctors for improving patient health. In the long run, the goal is to save Medicare money and encourage doctors to provide higher quality care.  (Sullivan, 10/14)

For decades, doctors and hospitals have routinely received a set fee for their services and tests in treating elderly Americans under the Medicare program, regardless of the outcome. This fee-for-service approach provided virtually no incentives for physicians to achieve better outcomes and assure that the patient wasn’t coming back for more treatment or hospitalization anytime soon. The new rule, an outgrowth of bipartisan legislation approved by Congress last year to change the way physicians are paid, is designed to shift the medical system toward rewarding quality over quantity of treatment while saving hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming years, starting in 2019. (Pianin, 10/15)

Reaction was positive to a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services rule released Friday finalizing changes to how doctors are paid through Medicare. Health provider groups said they were pleased that the agency has been, and expects to continue to be, responsive to their concerns. The changes implement a new law aimed at saving the Medicare program money by rewarding providers for high quality care. Under the rule, providers will have two paths to choose from to start shifting away from the traditional fee-for-service system. (McIntire, 10/14)