Date: January 21, 2026
Time: 12:00 noon - 1:00 pm CST
Online Live Webinar via Zoom
Speaker: Dr. Ashby Wolfe, MD, MPP, MPH
Regional Chief Medical Officer
"Policy and Practice: A CMS Update"
Join this session to understand the latest CMS policies, agency priorities, and initiatives.
Suggested learning objectives: upon the conclusion of this session, attendees will be able to:
- Identify recent CMS initiatives including those related to quality and innovation
- Describe key reimbursement policies finalized for 2026 supporting care of beneficiaries in the Medicare program
- Understand current telehealth policies and guidance for providing telehealth services under the Medicare fee schedule
BIO:
Dr. Ashby Wolfe is a board-certified family physician and serves as Regional Chief Medical Officer for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Based in the CMS Seattle and San Francisco offices, Dr. Wolfe has served as a CMS Regional Chief Medical Officer since 2015, supporting the implementation of Medicare and Medicaid policy across the Western United States and the Pacific Territories (AK, ID, OR, WA, AZ, CA, HI, NV, Guam, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands). As a senior medical advisor for CMS, she also focuses on cross-cutting implementation of agency initiatives, providing clinical expertise around payment policy, quality improvement, survey operations, contracted health plans and serves as a principal liaison with the clinical community across the West and Outer Pacific. Dr. Wolfe also continues to lead agency-wide work on the Acute Hospital Care at Home Initiative, as extended by Congress, following the end of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency.
Dr. Wolfe completed her medical degree at SUNY Stony Brook University School of Medicine in New York, and her residency training at the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, California. She also holds a Masters of Public Policy and a Masters of Public Health from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Wolfe has practiced broad-scope family medicine in academic, integrated and community settings over the course of her career, and has a particular interest in improving the quality of care for vulnerable populations. She holds medical licenses in both the State of California and the State of Washington, and currently serves as a member of her local HHS medical reserve corps. She has published on the CMS Acute Hospital Care at Home initiative as well as multiple articles on Medicare and Medicaid policy; she is a contributing author of the public health text Prevention is Primary (Jossey-Bass). In her free time, she enjoys hiking, swimming and traveling with her husband and two children.