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 |
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Moving forward from the sustainable growth rate (SGR) system (3)The Congress should direct the Secretary to identify overpriced fee-schedule services andreduce their relative value units (RVUs) accordingly. To fulfill this requirement, theSecretary could use the data collected under the process in recommendation 2. Thesereductions should be budget neutral within the fee schedule. Starting in 2015, the Congressshould specify that the RVU reductions achieve an… Read more » |
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October 2011 |
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. |
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October 2011 |
Enhancing Medicare’s technical assistance to and oversight of providers (1)The Congress should redesign the current Quality Improvement Organization program to allow the Secretary to provide funding for time-limited technical assistance directly to providers and communities. The Congress should require the Secretary to develop an accountability structure to ensure these funds are used appropriately |
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June 2011 |
Enhancing Medicare’s technical assistance to and oversight of providers (2)The Congress should authorize the Secretary to define criteria to qualify technical assistance agents so that a variety of entities can compete to assist providers and to provide community-level quality improvement. The Congress should remove requirements that the agents be physician sponsored, serve a specific state, and have regulatory responsibilities. |
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June 2011 |
Enhancing Medicare’s technical assistance to and oversight of providers (3)The Secretary should make low-performing providers and community-level initiatives a high priority in allocating resources for technical assistance for quality improvement. |
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June 2011 |
Enhancing Medicare’s technical assistance to and oversight of providers (4)The Secretary should regularly update the conditions of participation so that the requirements incorporate and emphasize evidence-based methods of improving quality of care. |
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June 2011 |
Enhancing Medicare’s technical assistance to and oversight of providers (5)The Congress should require the Secretary to expand interventions that promote systemic remediation of quality problems for persistently low-performing providers. |
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June 2011 |
Enhancing Medicare’s technical assistance to and oversight of providers (6)The Secretary should establish a public recognition program for high-performing providers that participate in collaboratives or learning networks, or otherwise act as mentors, to improve the quality of lower performing providers. |
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June 2011 |
Improving payment accuracy and appropriate use of ancillary services (1)The Secretary should accelerate and expand efforts to package discrete services in the physician fee schedule into larger units for payment. |
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June 2011 |
Improving payment accuracy and appropriate use of ancillary services (2)The Congress should direct the Secretary to apply a multiple procedure payment reduction to the professional component of diagnostic imaging services provided by the same practitioner in the same session. |
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June 2011 |