“Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport… and I’ve got a sneaky feeling you’ll find that love, actually, is all around.” It is too early to start thinking about Christmas, but Love Actually – which begins with the ever-droll Hugh Grant narrating that sappy line – is on my mind. That Christmas movie is like comfort food on film. Lots of good actors, great music, relatively amusing stories, and plenty of sap. That’s what the world needs right now, more love and sappiness. Unfortunately, love and sap are not typical health IT policy themes. And so, the blog today will touch on a less-lovey-dovey topic: provider directories. I explain below in the One Thoughtful Paragraph.
Other news that is not lovey-dovey, but important for our health tech interests:
- ASTP/ONC and CMS released several new or updated health IT market datasets, including 2023 certified health IT usage by hospitals and clinicians in Medicare programs, hospitals participating in health information networks (2022-2024), and a catalog of health apps from EHR marketplaces (2019-2025), finding trends in the evolution of the digital health ecosystem.
- U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Chair Ted Cruz (R-TX) introduced a legislative framework for AI last week, outlining five pillars for “light-touch” AI regulation. The framework expands upon the White House’s AI Action Plan and includes the SANDBOX Act, which would establish a two-year program where AI developers can test new technologies in a modified regulatory environment and waive certain testing requirements.
- The AMA included several health AI services in the 2026 Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) code set, including algorithmic analysis of electrocardiogram recording and AI-enabled software for burn wound assessment. It is an acknowledgement of an AMA survey that showed almost two-thirds of doctors reported using health AI last year.
What kind of idiot doesn’t make copies? In the movie Love Actually, this is what a frustrated Aurelia says to Colin Firth’s character, an author, as they swim in a freezing pond to try and retrieve his book manuscript pages that flew off in the wind. Frustrations with a different kind of “book” – everyone’s health plan provider directory – are also coming to a climactic scene at CMS. Patients know they should look for a doctor in their health plan’s provider directory to find “in-network” providers to get lower or no out-of-pocket charges. But health plans try and fail to keep the provider directory information updated and patients end up feeling like they are swimming in a freezing pond going after a useless book. To fix this problem, CMS is preparing to launch a national provider directory. It is trying it out in Oklahoma – writing a small book first. In the meantime, CMS proposed (in a new rule) that Medicare Advantage plans submit their provider network lists to the agency by January 1, 2026, and update it every 30 days to reflect changes in provider participation. The idea is that CMS will add the information to the Medicare Plan Finder – one-stop shopping for everything that a Medicare beneficiary needs to know about their health plan and provider options. Interestingly, CMS didn’t also suggest that providers should keep health plans updated about their information, despite acknowledging comments that the “underlying cause of inaccuracy is when providers fail to promptly update their address, telephone number, or other provider directory information.” So that makes things harder, because we all know that plan-provider relationship is a bit strained. It is like in the movie, Love Actually, when the British Prime Minister says to the cocky American President: “I love that word “relationship.” Covers all manner of sins, doesn’t it?”
