Commission Recommendations
MedPAC makes recommendations to the Congress and to the Secretary of Health and Human Services on issues affecting the administration of the Medicare program. With its recommendations, the Commission strives to improve the delivery of care, while ensuring financial stability and maximizing value for the program. After extensive analysis and evaluation, our recommendations are discussed and voted on by Commissioners in our public meetings. Recommendations are typically published in two main reports, released in March and June of each year.
| Recommendations | Topic(s) | Date |
|---|---|---|
Assessing payment for outpatient hospital care in rural areasIn the short term, no outpatient payment adjustments for rural hospitals are needed in addition to the current hold-harmless provision. The Secretary should revisit outpatient payments to rural hospitals when better information on hospitals’ experience with the payment system is available. |
|
June 2001 |
Improving payment for inpatient hospital care in rural areas (A)The Congress should require that rural referral centers’ wages exceed the average wage in their area to quality for geographic reclassification, but these facilities should retain their waiver from the proximity rule. |
|
June 2001 |
Improving payment for inpatient hospital care in rural areas (B)The Congress should require the Secretary to develop a graduated adjustment to the rates used in the inpatient prospective payment system for hospitals with low overall volumes of discharges. This adjustment should only apply to hospitals that are more than a specified number of miles from another facility providing inpatient care, with appropriate exceptions for… Read more » |
|
June 2001 |
Prospective payment for home health services in rural areas (A)The Congress should not exempt rural home health services from the prospective payment system. |
|
June 2001 |
Prospective payment for home health services in rural areas (B)The Secretary should study a sample of home health providers: to evaluate the impact of prospective payment on home health in rural areas; to evaluate costs that may affect the adequacy of prospective payments, and to find ways to improve all cost reports. |
|
June 2001 |
Quality of care in rural areas (A)The Secretary should require the peer review organizations to include rural populations and providers when carrying out their quality improvement activities. |
|
June 2001 |
Financial performance and inpatient payment issues for PPS hospitals (D)The Congress should protect urban hospitals from the adverse effect of nearby hospitals being reclassified to areas with higher wage indexes by computing each area’s wage index as if none of the hospitals located in the area had been reassigned. |
|
March 2001 |
Reconciling Medicare+Choice payments and fee-for-service spending (D)In defining local payment areas, the Secretary should explore using areas that contain sufficient numbers of Medicare beneficiaries to produce reliable estimates of spending and risk. |
|
March 2001 |