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 |
|---|---|---|
Medicare+Choice payment and eligibility policy (A)CMS should continue to risk-adjust payments with the new CMS hierarchical condition category system, but should not continue to offset the impact of risk adjustment on overall payments in 2005 and subsequent years. |
|
February 2004 |
Outpatient dialysis services (1)The Congress should maintain current law and update the composite rate by 1.6 percent for 2005. |
|
February 2004 |
Outpatient dialysis services (2)The Congress should establish a quality incentive payment policy for physicians and facilities providing outpatient dialysis services. |
|
February 2004 |
Ambulatory surgical center services (1)The Secretary should expedite collection of recent ASC charge and cost data for the purpose of analyzing and revising the ASC payment system |
|
February 2003 |
Ambulatory surgical center services (2)The Congress should eliminate the update to payment rates for ASC services for fiscal year 2004. |
|
February 2003 |
Ambulatory surgical center services (3)Until the Secretary implements a revised ASC payment system, the Congress should ensure that payment rates for ASC procedures do not exceed hospital outpatient PPS rates for those procedures, after accounting for differences in the bundle of services covered. |
|
February 2003 |
Outpatient dialysis servicesThe Congress should update the composite rate payment by the projected change in input prices, less 0.9 percent, for calendar year 2004. |
|
February 2003 |
Hospital inpatient and outpatient services (3)For calendar year 2003, the Secretary should increase the payment rates for services covered by the outpatient prospective payment system by the rate of increase in the hospital market basket |
|
March 2002 |
Outpatient dialysis servicesFor calendar year 2003, the Congress should update the composite rate payment for outpatient dialysis services by 2.4 percent. |
|
March 2002 |
End-stage renal disease payment policies in traditional Medicare (A)The Congress should instruct the Secretary to broaden the composite rate payment bundle to include widely used services currently excluded from it. The Secretary should continue to emphasize quality monitoring and quality improvement efforts to ensure that patients have access to high-quality dialysis care. |
|
March 2001 |