A September 18 letter from the nation's largest physician group warns that relaxing enforcement next year would leave doctors relying on faxes and phone calls while patients wait for approval of needed care.
The American Medical Association is pressing federal regulators not to soften a January 1, 2027, deadline that requires many health plans to handle prior authorization electronically. In a September 18 letter to CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz, AMA CEO John Whyte, MD, said health plans are mischaracterizing limited physician engagement as a lack of interest. That notion, he wrote, "is a manufactured problem created to justify a delay."
