The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is accepting nominations for appointments to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), the independent agency that advises Congress on Medicare. Submit letters of nomination and resumes to MedPACappointments@gao.gov.

In this letter, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) describes opportunities under Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to better address social determinants of health (SDOH) as well as federal authorities under Medicaid and CHIP that states can use to address SDOH.

For Medicare cost reports ending March 1, 2020, through December 31, 2020, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is granting providers an additional 60 days from the initial due date to file their cost reports. Read more here.

The Federal Office of Rural Health Policy (FORHP) finalized modifications to the definition of ‘rural’ used to designate areas eligible for its rural health grants.  For grants awarded after October 1, 2021, FORHP will add all outlying Metropolitan counties that do not contain any Urbanized Area (UA) population to the list of eligible areas. With this change, almost 300 counties in 42 states will be newly-designated as completely eligible for rural health grants. Read more here.