Radiology Legislation Playbook 2026
Radiology is fighting four legislative battles at once. Here is what is actually at stake. 🏥 The Medicare fee schedule went up 3.26% in 2026. Sounds like progress. It is not. According to BC Advantage, that rate is still more than 7% lower today than it was 10 years ago. Meanwhile, four separate bills are moving through Congress right now, and most radiology operators I talk to know maybe one of them. Here is the full breakdown. 📋 The 4-Bill Radiology Legislation Framework (Summer 2026) 1. H.R. 8163, Provider Reimbursement Stability Act of 2026 This is the big one. It targets the structural math problem inside the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule. Key provisions: - Two-year lookback period to correct utilization ...
Medical Imaging Workforce Crisis 2026
A scheduler in a busy imaging department is on her fourth call of the morning. 🔔 Two of her CT techs called out, there is no per diem pool left to tap, and the MRI suite opens in 40 minutes. This is not a bad week. This is Thursday. According to AHRA's Link publication, the 2025 ASRT Radiologic Sciences Workplace and Staffing Survey shows that overall pressure in medical imaging remains historically elevated across every major modality. The numbers are not directionally alarming. They are operationally disqualifying. 📊 THE 2025 VACANCY REALITY BY MODALITY Here is what the survey actually found: - CT: 19.4% vacancy rate, the highest in the 2025 survey - MRI: 17.4% - Cardiovascular interventional technology: 17.4% ...
FQHC Funding Cliff Dec 2026
Everyone is talking about Medicaid cuts. The real FQHC crisis hits in December. 🚨 The Community Health Center Fund, the mandatory pool that supplies the bulk of Section 330 grant dollars, is authorized only through December 2026. According to Pease Bell, that fund supplies roughly 70% of federal grant dollars to health centers. And right now, it is operating on an authorization measured in months, not years. Let that sink in. Here is what that looks like on the ground inside a community health center: - Roughly 1,400 health centers operate more than 16,000 service sites nationwide - About 90% of patients served live at or below 200% of the federal poverty level - Medicaid is already the single largest ...
DeepHealth Breast Ultrasound FDA Clearance
37% less interpretation time. That is not a feature. That is a workflow reset. 🔬 DeepHealth just got FDA 510(k) clearance for an AI-powered breast ultrasound solution that does something most imaging AI still does not do: it handles detection, characterization, AND report generation in a single workflow. The consensus right now is that AI in radiology is an assist tool. It flags things. It surfaces findings. The radiologist still does the heavy lifting. My read is different. This clearance is a signal that the assist model is giving way to something more structural. Here is what the fetched press release actually says, verbatim: - Greater than 98% accuracy in localizing breast lesions - 8% improved sensitivity for breast cancer ...
Medicaid Work Rule Takes Effect
CMS just published its own projection of who loses Medicaid. The number stopped me cold. 😶 2.3 million people. That is what the agency itself projects will lose Medicaid coverage in fiscal year 2027 under the new work requirement rule. Not an advocacy group's estimate. Not a think tank model. The government's own math. The federal Medicaid work rule took legal effect on Friday, July 31. But according to the inkl reporting on this story, the date that actually matters for families is not July 31. It is August 31, when states must begin notifying Medicaid members, and January 1, 2027, when compliance enforcement begins. Here is what the rule actually requires: - Non-pregnant adults aged 19 to 64 enrolled ...
FDA Approves 2nd Blood CRC Test
A new blood test just changed colorectal cancer screening forever. 🩸 Everyone is celebrating this as a technology win. And it is. But the harder problem is not the test. It is the 60 million Americans who are already overdue for screening and still will not show up. On July 27, 2026, the FDA approved SimpleScreen CRC, Freenome's blood-based screening test for colorectal cancer in adults 45 and older at average risk. Abbott will exclusively commercialize it in the U.S. this fall. Here is what the data actually shows, according to Freenome's press release: - The PREEMPT CRC study enrolled more than 48,000 asymptomatic, average-risk adults ages 45 to 85 across more than 200 sites. That is the largest prospective ...
This Week in Health Funding: 5 Deals
A physician sits in a reading room in Cleveland. Before she touches a single chart, an AI agent has already triaged her queue, flagged a coronary risk from an incidental scan, and routed three patients to telemedicine. That is not a pilot. That is production in 2026. 🔥 This week reminded me why I do what I do. Healthcare's biggest, most stubborn problems are finally attracting real capital at real scale. Every verified deal from the week of July 21, 2026: Candid Health: $120M Series D, led by Sixth Street Growth. Automated medical billing and reimbursement. Tripled valuation since Series C. Over 200 healthcare orgs. Pearl Health: $110M. AI platform helping primary care physicians deliver better outcomes at lower cost ...
CY2027 MPFS: Radiology Pay Cut Framework
CMS just cut radiology pay again. Nobody is surprised. That is the problem. 📉 When a payment cut lands and the collective response is a shrug, it means the erosion has become the baseline. On July 14, 2026, CMS released the CY 2027 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule proposed rule. According to MD Revenue Group, if finalized, these policies take effect January 1, 2027. The 60-day public comment window closes September 14, 2026. This is not a small administrative tweak. It is another compounding hit on a system the American Medical Association has already documented fell 29% in inflation-adjusted terms between 2001 and 2026. Here is what is actually in this rule. 🔢 THE CY 2027 MPFS RADIOLOGY REIMBURSEMENT BREAKDOWN Save ...
CMS Defers $867M in CA Medicaid Funds
$867,465,287. That is the size of the federal Medicaid deferral CMS just dropped on California. 🚨 Not a rumor. Not a threat. A signed letter to California State Medicaid Director Tyler Sadwith dated July 21, 2026. According to FQHC Talent, CMS withheld $709,311,454 in federal medical assistance and $158,153,833 in administrative funds, structured as a negative grant award for Q2 FY2026. Here is what you need to know before you panic, or before you dismiss it. 💡 This is NOT a direct cut to your health center. No FQHC is named anywhere in the letter. Nothing in it changes PPS rates or health-center payment methodology. That matters. A lot of people in our space are reading headlines and drawing the ...