The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) the nonpartisan congressional agency which informs the U.S. Congress with analysis on the Medicare program, released its annual report to Congress on Tuesday, including some suggestions for significant changes to Medicare Advantage reimbursements. These suggestions could have a major...
The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission voted to recommend Congress create a new value incentive program to reward skilled nursing facilities for good performance. MedPAC also approved a recommendation for Congress to direct the Department of Health and Human Services to develop and begin to report patient experience measures for...CMS Rules
The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) agreed that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) must put together a consolidated group of alternative payment models in order to improve demonstrations.
From the commission's recommendation:
The Secretary should implement a more harmonized portfolio of fewer spending...National News
This week, COVID-19 continues to impact the data collection and maintenance of Medicare Advantage and Medicaid Managed Care programs. MedPAC reasserts its findings that Medicare Advantage costs the government more than fee-for-service and Oklahoma asks "is now really the time to be privatizing Medicaid?"
Medicare Advantage
The...National News
Last week, Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) met to present its draft recommendations for 2022 payment rules. Their implication: hospitals, physicians, hospices, outpatient dialysis centers, and ambulatory surgery centers will be just fine financially less than two years after the onset of the pandemic.
According to...Arizona News
Medicare’s ongoing experiment with bundled payment models receives mixed reviews in a new review from Milbank Quarterly. Other studies have shown that for specific types of acute care, the savings from these programs does not reflect the effort required, but this study found that bundling initiatives can help slow the growth of payer...News
Medicare's fee-for-service payment system should be gradually replaced "by payment to accountable systems of care" wherever possible, according to the annual report to Congress from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC).
As part of its mandate from Congress, each June the commission reports on refinements to Medicare...National News
The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) voted unanimously to maintain updates to Medicare physician payments planned for 2021 -- with some caveats.
Primarily, the commission was concerned with the lack of data available on physician expenses. They stressed a need to better understand these expenses to improve the...National News
According to the study, MA costs between 2 and 5.5 percent more than traditional Medicare in comparison to the MSSP program, which saved Medicare 1 and 2 percent in 2016; together MA and the MSSP covered nearly 20 million Medicare beneficiaries.
According to the report, MA savings is lost when payments are boosted for star rating...White Papers, E books, Reports and more
The annual data drop from MedPAC also includes information on quality of care in the Medicare program along with Medicare beneficiary and other payer liability.
Some of the information the MedPAC Data Book is duplicative of MedPAC’s March and June reports to the Congress; other information presented is unique to the June 2019 Data...National News
Since 2016, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) has had its eye on a unified payment system for skilled nursing facilities (SNFs), in-patient rehabilitation facilities (IRFs), long-term care hospitals (LTCHs) and home health agencies. Its now questioning providers' self reporting of patients' ADLs.
Following up on its...National News
Medicare Payment Advisory Commission’s June 2018 Report to the Congress: Medicare and the Health Care Delivery System promotes value-based payment reform and the use of post-acute care to increase savings and patient outcomes.
Authors concurred the Hospital Readmission Reduction Program (HRRP) has since 2010 played a part in...
The proposal would reduce Medicare payment rates by 30 percent for some services at hospital-affiliated free-standing emergency departments that are located within 6 miles of an on-campus hospital emergency department.
NPR reports free-standing emergency departments have been cropping up across the U.S. in recent years and now number...
The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) voted 14-2 to in favor of killing the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) and replacing it with an alternative model of reimbursement.
MedPAC Chairman Francis "Jay" Crosson of Palo Alto, California, said he wished the commission had made its recommendation sooner, but it had...
There is disagreement over what to replace it with.
MedPAC members are concerned that MIPS will not achieve its desired goals. The flexibility of the program, various options for how physicians can report measures and the broad exemptions for certain types of clinicians, has made it complex. There are also statistical challenges that...
A refresher may be in order of what the acronyms mean and their purposes.
The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) is an independent US federal body. MedPAC was established by the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 (P.L. 105-33). The Commission's 17 members bring diverse expertise in the financing and delivery of health care...
