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All's been quiet on the health reform front for a couple of weeks, ever since the Senate passed its version of a reform bill on Christmas Eve. As we said earlier, after both houses in Congress pass their versions of a bill, a conference committee is formed to merge both versions into a single piece of legislation acceptable to all. And by "all" I mean a majority in both houses.

Every couple of months, a reporter from a major news organization writes the "there's no one running Medicare" story. On Jan. 12, The New York Times published such a story about the lack of a CMS administrator.

Wednesday night, I had the privilege to stand along with a couple hundred people and listen to Atul Gawande talk about his new book "The Checklist Manifesto" at Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C. Gawande is not only an author, but a surgeon in Boston and director of the World Health Organization's Global Challenge for Safer Surgical Care. His recent article in the New Yorker on Medicare spending last year was said to have been required reading in the White House.

The RACs didn't take much a break this holiday season. One RAC in particular gave providers in its region a lot to think about when they returned from winter vacation.

We've noted practices in some areas of the country are facing decreases in their reimbursements because the minimum work geographic practice cost indices (GPCI) of 1.000 expired Jan. 1. Below is a complete list of those locales with work GPCIs below 1.000.  

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