Short title; table of contents

(a) Short title This Act may be cited as the Patients First Act of 2026. (b) Table of contents Sec. 1. Short title; table of contents. TITLE I—Strengthening reimbursement and patient access Sec. 101. Modifying the conversion factor updates applicable to physicians’ services under the Medicare program. Sec. 102. Hybrid payment model for primary care services. Sec. 103. Work geographic floor adjustment for high inflationary years. TITLE II—POINTS Sec. 201. Implementation of the Patient Outcome Improvement National Tabulation System. Sec. 202. Payment reform. Sec. 203. Quality Reform Task Force. Sec. 204. Modification of MIPS payment adjustments. Sec. 205. Modifying requirements and approval periods for qualified clinical data registries. Sec. 206. Expanded access to claims data to facilitate research and quality improvement. Sec. 207. Modification of appropriate use criteria data collection for applicable imaging services. Sec. 208. Rules of construction. TITLE III—APM improvement Sec. 301. Qualifying APM participant threshold freeze. Sec. 302. CMI model requirements. Sec. 303. Report on barriers to participation in value-based payment models. TITLE IV—Physician payment improvements Sec. 401. Updating the budget neutrality threshold. Sec. 402. Budget neutrality corrections relating to estimated utilization. Sec. 403. Timely updates to direct costs used to calculate practice expense RVUs. Sec. 404. Limitation on year-to-year conversion factor variance.