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Sarah Cheney supports Crowell Health Solutions, a strategic consulting firm affiliated with Crowell & Moring, to help clients pursue and deliver innovative alternatives to the traditional approaches of providing and paying for health care, including through digital health, health equity, and value-based health care. She is a healthcare policy intern in the Washington, D.C. office.

 

Prior to joining Crowell Health Solutions, Sarah worked at a government affairs and intelligence company where she provided healthcare policy consulting services to clients. As an associate consultant, she led regulatory compliance projects for clients interested in drug affordability and transparency. She also monitored legislative updates to public and private insurance options related to coverage, expansion, fraud, and abuse. Sarah also worked as a Policy Analyst under Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers’ Advisory Council on Equity and Inclusion. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin Madison with a Bachelor’s of Science in Legal Studies and is currently a Master of Public Policy student at The George Washington University.

On October 18, 2024, the American Medical Association’s (AMA’s) Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) Editorial Panel released a Summary of Panel Actions from its September 2024 Panel Meeting, which includes six new remote physiologic monitoring (RPM) and remote therapeutic monitoring (RTM) codes in addition to revisions to the existing codes. Effective January 2026, these changes include removing the current requirement for healthcare providers to receive 16 days’ worth of data to bill RPM codes. The AMA CPT Editorial Panel likely made these updates in response to stakeholder feedback that the 16-day billing threshold was not necessary in certain clinical use cases. Additionally, two new codes will reimburse providers for 10-19 minutes of managing RPM or RTM data in a month.  Continue Reading AMA’s CPT Editorial Panel Approves New Codes Covering Remote Patient Monitoring Services

On October 2, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released final guidance outlining the process for the second cycle of negotiations through the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program. This guidance provides additional information for manufacturer effectuation of negotiated prices for drugs, which the statute refers to as Maximum Fair Prices (MFPs). Within this guidance, CMS intends to ensure that individuals with Medicare can access drugs at negotiated prices from both cycles in 2026 and 2027.Continue Reading HHS Releases Final Guidance for the Second Cycle of the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program

On October 9, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Innovation Center, issued a Request for Information (RFI) about the Innovation Center’s proposed Medicare $2 Drug List Model (the M2DL Model), which aims to test whether offering low-cost, clinically important generic drugs can improve medication adherence, lead to better health outcomes, and improve satisfaction with the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit. The RFI includes a sample list of prescription drugs that it intends to include and seeks input from healthcare stakeholders on the sample list of drugs and other features (i.e., outreach efforts and maximizing stakeholder participation) of the model. Comments in response to the RFI may be submitted through the Innovation Center’s online survey portal by December 9, 2024.Continue Reading CMS Innovation Center Seeks Feedback on Medicare $2 Drug List Model