CMS is hosting its next meeting of the Advisory Panel on Hospital Outpatient Payment (Panel) on August 22-23, 2016. The purpose of the Panel is to advise HHS and CMS on ambulatory payment classification clinical integrity and weights and hospital outpatient therapeutic services supervision issues. In the meeting announcement, CMS notes that there has been a “significant decline in the volume of requests for technical advice from the Panel” in recent years. CMS therefore has decided that beginning in 2017, it will transition to one Panel meeting per year, which will be scheduled in the summer, and the winter Panel meeting will be discontinued (unless CMS programmatic need suggests otherwise).