In its statement to the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health following a recent hearing on implementation of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA), the Alliance of Specialty Medicine thanked Congress for important technical corrections to the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) and urged additional refinements to ensure beneficiary access to specialty medicine. The specialty physicians further urged congressional leaders to disregard recommendations from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) that call for an elimination of MIPS in favor of population-based models that limit meaningful engagement by specialists and poorly measure the quality of specialty care. Specialists argued that, despite efforts to establish specialty-focused alternative payment and delivery models, a fee-for-service-based quality improvement program, such as MIPS, is essential to ensuring beneficiary access to the full range of medical specialties and services they deliver.
