House Subcommittee on Health Holds Hearing on MACRA

Discussion The discussion was wide ranging and touched on a number of issues. Regarding bundled payments, Rep. Levin raised concerns about CMS moving away from value based care after the agency scaled back CJR bundled payments. Rep. Johnson asked if social security numbers from Medicare cards are on track, which CMS confirmed is the case. Rep. Thompson asked when the CMS vision of interoperability will be achieved, and CMS noted it is still working on the issue. The agency highlighted its work on reducing regulatory burden as being helpful in this particular area. On the topic of administrative burdens, Rep. Smith offered general comments and CMS described the problem as very real and not an abstract concept. Physicians are buried in their electronic records and it takes away from patient care. CMS said they have acted on administrative burden issues in prior rules such as raising the low volume threshold for MIPS and creating virtual groups. Regarding APMs, Rep. Jenkins encouraged CMS to allow more one sided risk models to share in APM incentive payments, although CMS has been resistant on this issue in the past. Rep. Chu described having the first all-inclusive ACO payment model in her district. She highlighted a secondary payer problem in the model and asked for CMS to ensure that payment errors do not occur in the future. Rep. Kind asked about CMS goals for APM participation. There was a 50% goal under the former administration. CMS was non-committal, however, about a ...
Source: Policy and Medicine - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs