In response to the Senate Finance Committee’s recently released white paper on Medicare payment reform, the Alliance of Specialty Medicine submitted a detailed letter that outlined actions that Congress should take to stabilize the Medicare physician payment system while ensuring successful value-based care incentives are available for specialty physicians.  The Alliance’s policy recommendations included:

  • Supporting the use of specialty-focused Qualified Clinical Data Registries (QCDRs) and specialty-specific measures to improve the quality of care under FFS Medicare.
  • Instructing CMS to provide access to Medicare claims data to assist specialties in understanding gaps in care and developing quality and cost measures.
  • Ensuring the MIPS Cost category to ensure cost-containment efforts do not result in poorer quality care or negatively impact access to care.
  • Improving the Alternative Payment Model (APM) pipeline to provide more opportunities for specialists to participate meaningfully in APMs.
  • Restoring and extending the full 5% APM incentive payment, releasing more granular and timely data on physician participation in MIPS and APMs by specialty, and addressing fundamental flaws in the MIPS program.

Click here to access the entire letter.