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 |
|---|---|---|
Improving quality assurance for institutional providers (H)The Congress should authorize the Secretary to develop intermediate sanctions specific to each institutional provider type that reflect the scope and severity of the deficiency and to consider a provider’s past performance in levying sanctions. |
|
June 2000 |
Improving quality assurance for institutional providers (I)The Secretary should take additional steps to ensure that private accrediting organizations with Medicare deeming authority are, in fact, ensuring that facilities meet Medicare certification standards. |
|
June 2000 |
Improving quality assurance for institutional providers (J)The Secretary should make more information about the results of the survey and certification process available to beneficiaries. |
|
June 2000 |
Medicare beneficiaries’ access to quality health care (A)The Secretary should periodically identify potential problems in beneficiaries’ access to care that arise in the evolving Medicare program and should report annually to the Congress on findings from studies undertaken to examine those potential problems. |
|
March 2000 |
Revising payment methods and monitoring quality of care in traditional Medicare (F)The Secretary should establish systems for routinely assessing the quality of post-acute care and should use the information these systems generate to: evaluate the effects of new payment systems on quality of care, focus quality assurance activities, facilitate continuous quality improvement, and promote informed patient decision making. |
|
March 2000 |
Revising payment methods and monitoring quality of care in traditional Medicare (G)The Secretary should coordinate systems for monitoring post-acute care quality across all service settings to: assess important aspects of the care uniquely provided in a particular setting, compare certain processes and outcomes of care provided in alternative settings, and evaluate the quality of care furnished in multiple-provider episodes of post-acute care. |
|
March 2000 |
Revising payment methods and monitoring quality of care in traditional Medicare (H)The Secretary should sponsor the development of post-acute care quality measures needed to monitor outcomes- such as beneficiary health and functional status- and the appropriate use of services. |
|
March 2000 |
Revising payment methods and monitoring quality of care in traditional Medicare (I)The Secretary should review all post-acute care data collection requirements. Each item should have an explicit rationale, and only information needed for accurate billing, risk adjustment, or quality measurement should be required. |
|
March 2000 |
Addressing health care errors under Medicare (A)The Secretary should establish patient safety as a quality improvement priority for Medicare and should take steps to minimize the incidence of preventable errors in the delivery of care provided to beneficiaries. |
|
June 1999 |
Addressing health care errors under Medicare (B)The Secretary should support and make use of ongoing public and private error-reduction initiatives- including those that promote incident reporting by providers, analysis of root causes and patterns in occurrence, and dissemination of information designed to prevent recurrence- through Medicare’s policies and quality improvement activities. |
|
June 1999 |