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 |
|---|---|---|
Moving forward from the sustainable growth rate (SGR) system (4)Under the 10-year update path specified in recommendation 1, the Congress should direct theSecretary to increase the shared savings opportunity for physicians and health professionalswho join or lead two-sided risk accountable care organizations (ACOs). The Secretary shouldcompute spending benchmarks for these ACOs using 2011 fee-schedule rates. |
|
October 2011 |
Graduate medical education financing: Focusing on educational priorities (5)The Secretary should study strategies for increasing the diversity of our health professional workforce (e.g., increasing the shares from underrepresented rural, lower income, and minority communities) and report on what strategies are most effective to achieve this pipeline goal. |
|
June 2010 |
Home health services (2A)The Congress should direct the Secretary to expeditiously modify the home health payment system to protect beneficiaries from stinting or lower quality of care in response to rebasing. The approaches should include risk corridors and blended payments that mix prospective payment with elements of cost-based reimbursement. |
|
March 2010 |
Report on comparing quality among Medicare Advantage plans and between Medicare Advantage and fee-for-service Medicare (1)The Secretary should define electronic health record “meaningful use” criteria such that all qualifying electronic health records can collect and report the data needed to compute a comprehensive set of process and outcome measures consistent with these recommendations. Qualifying electronic health records should have the capacity to include and report patient demographic data such as… Read more » |
|
March 2010 |
Home health services (3)The Congress should direct the Secretary to assess payment measures that protect the quality of care and ensure incentives for the efficient delivery of home health care. The study should include alternative payment strategies such as blended payments and risk corridors and outcome-based quality incentives. |
|
February 2009 |
A path to bundled payment around a hospitalization (B)To encourage providers to collaborate and better coordinate care, the Congress should direct the Secretary to reduce payments to hospitals with relatively high readmission rates for select conditions and also allow shared accountability between physicians and hospitals. The Congress should also direct the Secretary to report within two years on the feasibility of broader approaches,… Read more » |
|
June 2008 |
A path to bundled payment around a hospitalization (C)The Congress should require the Secretary to create a voluntary pilot program to test the feasibility of actual bundled payment for services around hospitalization episodes for select conditions. The pilot must have clear and explicit thresholds for determining whether it can be expanded into the full Medicare program or should be discontinued. |
|
June 2008 |
A revised prospective payment system for skilled nursing facilities (A)The Congress should require the Secretary to revise the skilled nursing facility prospective payment system by: * Adding a separate nontherapy ancillary component, * Replacing the therapy component with one that establishes payments based on predicted patient care needs, and * Adopting an outlier policy |
|
June 2008 |
Promoting the use of primary care (A)The Congress should establish a budget-neutral payment adjustment for primary care services billed under the physician fee schedule and furnished by primary-care-focused practitioners. Primary-care-focused practitioners are those whose specialty designation is defined as primary care and/or those whose pattern of claims meets a minimum threshold of furnishing primary case services. The Secretary would use rulemaking… Read more » |
|
June 2008 |
Skilled nursing facility services (2)The Congress should establish a quality incentive payment policy for skilled nursing facilities in Medicare. |
|
February 2008 |