The Senate Finance Committee has scheduled three "roundtable discussions" on healthcare reform over the next month. The sessions will be a vehicle for lawmakers to hash out the potential impact of reforms with policy and industry experts.

All signs are pointing toward major healthcare reform this year, the White House's "health czar" Nancy Ann DeParle says. DeParle briefed reporters during a morning forum hosted by the Kaiser Family Foundation in Washington April 15. The former HCFA director under the Clinton administration spoke about her bipartisan efforts to make reform a reality this year as the head of the White House Office of Health Reform. She's met with 40 members of Congress and attending town hall-style meetings with Americans across the country over the last month.

CMS will temporarily take down the Provider Enrollment, Chain and Ownership System (PECOS) next week in order to make changes. PECOS will be down from 9 p.m. EST April 16 until 9 a.m. EST April 20 (a span of 84 hours) while it updates its "Data Center," the agency said in a short e-mail message.

The Wall Street Journal reported April 7 that stock prices for Medicare Advantage (MA) companies sunk in February in light of federal government plans to make cuts to the program. We've reported extensively on President Obama's intent to cut billions of dollars from MA, which tends to cost 13%-14% more than traditional Medicare.

You will soon find getting paid by Medicare for positron emission tomography (PET) scans easier (see PBN 1/26/09). CMS issued a final national coverage determination (NCD) to expand coverage for PET scans to initial testing for Medicare patients diagnosed with most solid tumor cancers.