Tag: MACRA

MedPAC’s Proposed “Reforms” Should Be Tested Before They’re Implemented: CMS’s Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program Is Exhibit A

Dec 6, 2018• 3

By KIP SULLIVAN JD

Egged on by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), Congress has imposed multiple pay-for-performance (P4P) schemes on the fee-for-service Medicare program. MedPAC recommended most of these schemes between 2003 and 2008, and Congress subsequently imposed them on Medicare, primarily via the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 and the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) of 2015.

MedPAC’s five-year P4P binge began with the endorsement of the general concept of P4P at all levels – hospital, clinic, and individual physician – in a series of reports to Congress in 2003, 2004, and 2005. This was followed by endorsements of vaguely described iterations of P4P, notably the “accountable care organization” in 2006 [1], punishment of hospitals for “excess” readmissions in 2007 [2], the “medical home” in 2008 and the “bundled payment” in 2008. None of these proposals were backed up by anything resembling evidence.

Congress endorsed all these schemes without asking for evidence or further details. Congress dealt with the vagueness of, and lack of evidence supporting, MedPAC’s proposals simply by ordering CMS to figure out how to make them work. CMS staff added a few more details to these proposals in the regulations they drafted, but the details were petty and arbitrarily adopted (how many primary doctors had to be in an ACO, how many patients had to sit on the advisory committee of a “patient-centered medical home,” how many days had to expire between a discharge and an admission to constitute a “readmission,” etc.).

New rule, new culture

This process – invention of nebulous P4P schemes by MedPAC, unquestioning endorsement by Congress, and clumsy implementation by CMS – is not working. Every one of the proposals listed above has failed to cut costs (with the possible exception of bundled payments for hip and knee replacements) and may be doing more harm than good to patients. These proposals are failing for an obvious reason – MedPAC and Congress subscribe to the belief that health policies do not need to be tested for effectiveness and safety before they are implemented. In their view, mere opinion suffices.

This has to stop. In this two-part essay I argue for a new rule: MedPAC shall not propose, and Congress shall not authorize, any program that has not been shown by rigorously conducted experiments to be effective at lowering cost without harming patients, improving quality, or both. This will require a culture change at MedPAC. Since its formation in 1997, MedPAC has taken the attitude that it does not have to provide any evidence for its proposals, and it does not have think through its proposals in enough detail to be tested. Over the last two decades MedPAC has demonstrated repeatedly that it believes merely opining about a poorly described solution is sufficient to discharge its obligation to Congress, taxpayers, and Medicare enrollees.
Continue reading…

MedPAC’s Repeal And Replace MIPs Campaign Will Not End Well

Jan 28, 2018• 10

By KIP SULLIVAN

“[T]his is tough. I don’t know how to proceed…. Lord help the staff who must bring all this together.”

That was how Dr. Francis Crosson, chairman of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), reacted to the commission’s baffling discussion at its January 11 meeting moments before it voted 14-2 to replace the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) with something called the “voluntary value program” (VVP) (pp. 167-169 of the transcript ). MedPAC’s staff must now summarize the January 11 discussion and prepare a report for inclusion in MedPAC’s March 2018 report to Congress.

MIPS is a pay-for-performance (P4P) scheme imposed on the traditional fee-for-service Medicare program by an act of Congress known as MACRA. MIPS requires that CMS measure performance on cost and quality at the level of the individual doctor, something MedPAC recently acknowledged can’t be done after spending 13 years claiming it could be done.

The portion of the commission’s January 11 discussion that focused on the repeal of MIPS was not hard to understand. The commissioners agreed that MIPS cannot work for multiple reasons, the most important being that the pools of patients treated by individual doctors are too small to permit accurate measurement of cost and quality. “MIPS will not succeed in helping beneficiaries choose clinicians, helping clinicians … improve value, or helping the Medicare program to reward clinicians based on value,” explained MedPAC staffer Kate Bloniarz. (pp. 116-117) Only one of the 16 commissioners present (Dr. Alice Coombs) disagreed with that statement.

Zen and the art of summarizing doubt

It was the commissioners’ discussion about what to replace MIPS with that will be very difficult to summarize. That’s because the discussion consisted largely of expressions of doubt about the VVP, which is essentially a proposal that all doctors who treat Medicare patients either join a “group” (aka ACO) or lose 2 percent of their Medicare payments. The discussion, which followed a vague opening presentation by two MedPAC staff members, consisted of numerous questions posed to the staff that neither the staff nor Dr. Crosson could answer. Because so many issues remained unresolved, ten of the 16 commissioners (one was absent) expressed reservations about voting for the VVP. How does the staff or anyone else summarize a discussion like that? How does the staff explain why the commission voted to recommend the VVP to Congress when a majority of commissioners have multiple concerns about it?Continue reading…

Super Macranomics

Oct 26, 2017• 1

By KIP SULLIVAN

This is the second of a two-part series on MedPAC’s October 4 decision to recommend the repeal of the MIPS program. In Part One , I gave the MedPAC staff credit for urging the commission to support repeal of MIPS, and I criticized their irrational proposal to replace MIPS. I said MedPAC is stuck in a vicious cycle – they recommend “reforms” without evidence, and when the reforms don’t work, they recommend evidence-free tweaks that don’t work either. I referred to this vicious cycle as a “tar pit.”
In this essay I attempt to explain how MedPAC created this intellectual tar pit. I begin by describing the three most important “reforms” in MACRA – pay-for-performance, ACOs, and “patient-centered medical homes.” Then I review the decisions MedPAC made, starting in 2003, that led them to endorse those “reforms.” We will see a pattern: MedPAC adopts “reform” proposals based on opinion, not evidence, and MedPAC never works out the details of their evidence-free proposals but instead foists that responsibility on Congress or CMS.

The three pillars of MACRA

If I were asked to explain MACRA (the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act) to someone who wasn’t familiar with it, I would start like this: “MACRA imposes a pay-for-performance (P4P) scheme on all doctors who participate in Medicare’s fee-for-service program. This program is called the MIPS program. Doctors who want to escape the MIPS program must join either an ACO or a ‘patient-centered medical home (PCMH).’”
Those of you who are familiar with MACRA will have noticed that I left out the handful of small-bore “bundled payment” programs that doctors could enroll in to escape MIPS. But those programs apply to relatively small pools of patients with specific diseases, not patient populations in the tens of thousands as ACOs and PCMHs do.

If you accept my summary description of MACRA, then you must also accept this statement: If P4P, ACOs, and “medical homes” don’t work, MACRA can’t work.

P4P must work at the level of the individual doctor if MIPS is to work, and it must work at the group level if ACOs and “homes” are going to work as advertised. [1] And ACOs and PCMHs must work if doctors are going to have some place to run to escape MIPS, and if Medicare is going to save money on the ACOs and PCMHs that doctors are expected to run to. Not one of the three nostrums essential to MACRA’s success – P4P, ACOs, and PCMHs – has worked (they do not lower costs and have mixed effects at best on quality). Yet MedPAC enthusiastically endorsed all of them.

CMS Should Play the Role of Virtual Group Matchmaker

Oct 3, 2017• 4

By MANU UPPAL and DAVID INTROCASO

In the 2018 proposed Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act’s (MACRA’s) rule, published earlier this year, HHS has again proposed to exclude two-thirds of physicians, or 900,000, from participation in the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS). MIPS was created under 2015 MACRA legislation to incent financially Medicare physicians and other Medicare Part B clinicians to improve care quality and reduce Medicare spending growth. HHS is choosing to exclude smaller-sized physician practices because, it is believed, MIPS reporting requirements place too high a burden on less resourced practices. However, MACRA legislation includes a “virtual group” provision that allows for solo and small group practices to partner in meeting MIPS reporting requirements. For technical reasons the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) was delayed in implementing the provision. The first year in which providers can participate in MIPS as a virtual group will be 2018. Designed correctly, virtual groups offer substantial advantages that include greater MIPS participation, more competitiveness, higher financial reward and more opportunity for small practices to keep their independence.

A Real (Living, Breathing) Health Care Reform Plan: Drop MACRA

Jun 27, 2017• 8

By STEVEN SOUMERAI

Dear Washington,

Congratulations! You have listened to the AMA and practicing physicians and made it a little easier to comply (at first) with the Medicare Quality Payment Program, part of the massive MACRA “pay for value” law.

But CMS’ announcements in The Federal Register and “fact sheet” are incomprehensible gobbledygook that will be understood by neither doctors, patients, nor the rest of society. The language personifies the complexity, unwieldiness and confused thinking in this huge national policy.

MACRA is a $15 billion boondoggle that the best research shows will neither improve quality nor control costs. Paying doctors for quality (e.g., doing a blood pressure exam) or efficiency may make sense theoretically, but it doesn’t work. Rather than making a dent in the continuing upward spiral of healthcare costs in America, it can even result in some doctors avoiding sicker patients because it affects their quality scores and income.

Early, poorly designed research suggested that paying for health or cost savings was effective, but these research designs did not account for already occurring improvements in medical practice that the policymakers took credit for. Decades of stronger, well-controlled research debunked these early findings and conclusively showed no effects of these economic policies.

So why does the Congress and administration continue to press ahead with this same tired and impotent policy?

MACRA Is Broken. It Needs to Go Away Now.

Apr 15, 2017• 17

By KIP SULLIVAN

At its January 12, 2017 meeting, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) made it clear they had reached the conclusion that the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) cannot work (see my last post ). MIPS is the larger of the two programs within MACRA; the Alternative Payment Model (APM) program is the other. The commission’s primary rationale for its conclusion about MIPS is that it’s not possible to measure physician “merit” (cost and quality) at the individual physician level.

But rather than recommend that Congress repeal MACRA (the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act), MedPAC decided to try to fix it. At the January and March 2 meetings, the commissioners discussed a staff proposal to amend MIPS substantially and to tweak the APM program. Those discussions went nowhere.

I give MedPAC credit for finally stating unequivocally that MIPS cannot work. But MedPAC should never have volunteered to fix MACRA. It can’t be done. By proposing modest amendments to MACRA and thereby implying it’s fixable, they stepped into an intellectual tar pit. I will illuminate this tar pit by describing the commission’s unproductive discussion about the staff’s proposed amendments to MACRA. To give you a sneak preview of what that discussion was like, I give you two excerpts from the transcript of the January meeting:

Measuring MACRA

Apr 15, 2017• 4

By STEVEN FINDLAY

With all the machinations over ACA repeal and replace, the new law that makes big changes in the way the federal government pays doctors—the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, or MACRA—hasn’t garnered much attention lately.

But doctors nationwide are sure thinking about it. That includes many of the regular commentators on THCB. I think it’s accurate to say that most of them have been highly critical of MACRA since the law was enacted in April 2015, and even after it was significantly amended late last year to address physician complaints. (See, for example, Kip Sullivan’s most recent post here.)

The law’s main provisions kicked in on Jan. 1, 2017, with 2017 being the first performance-reporting year, affecting payment in 2019.

In a policy brief on MACRA for Health Affairs published late last month, I raised a host of questions about MACRA.

As Kip and many others have noted, some parts of MACRA are weakly designed and both the law and regulations implementing it make some big assumptions. Excerpts from one section of the policy brief are below. The whole brief can be had at the link above. If you are well versed in MACRA, you can skip to the section titled “What’s the Debate?

Is the overall design coherent and workable?

Major special-interest groups, including those representing physicians, industry, and consumers and patients, supported MACRA’s intent and the general framework of the regulations through three comment periods.

However, almost all groups sought changes and raised questions. CMS’s final revisions were most responsive to physician groups, which were insistent on an easier path and more flexibility for doctors in the initial years of the program.

Evidence-Based Diagnosis and Faith-Based Solutions

Apr 11, 2017• 6

By KIP SULLIVAN, JD

It’s official: the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) has at long last decided that MACRA’s MIPS (Merit-based Incentive Payment System) can’t work.
MedPAC reached this decision at its January 12 and March 2, 2017 meetings.

Its principle rationale was that measuring “merit” (quality and cost) at the individual physician level, which is what MIPS requires CMS to do, is not possible. As one MedPAC staff person put it at the January meeting, “A redesign of the MIPS program should build off a clear-eyed assessment of the limit of the national Medicare program’s ability to assess clinician performance” (pp. 235-236 of the transcript of the morning session of the January 12, 2017 meeting).

New “kid” on specialty ACO block –Chuck Saunders, Integra Connect

Mar 3, 2017

By MATTHEW HOLT

One of the more surprising announcements at HIMSS17 (or anywhere so far this year) was that a company led by some well known health tech veterans has both invested a ton of money and been off the ground for some time, while being very quiet about it. Integra Connect is the company and it’s a tech and services company providing ACO/APM/MACRA/ MIPS-type services for high cost specialty care (think cancer). CEO Chuck Saunders was at Aetna’s Healthagen group (and before that Broadlane/WebMD/EDS and some others I forget) and the Chairman (and source of most funding) is Raj Mantena who built several companies in the specialty pharmacy space (inc ION and Oncoscripts). Integra Connect already over 1,000 employees and several large physician groups as customers and I spoke with Chuck about the (high cost and pretty large) niche they’re in and how they’re working.

MACRA and the New Quality Payment Program: Most Frequently Asked Questions

Oct 30, 2016• 4

November 2 | 2-3 PM EST / With THCB

On Oct. 14 the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released detailed regulations for implementation of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA). With so many changes to the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) and the Advanced Alternative Payment Model (APM) track, we at Health Catalyst have heard many questions and comments. This is understandable, as the substantial 962-page proposal has grown to the 2,398-page final rule. Also, since nearly all providers will be subject to the new Quality Payment Program (QPP), understanding MACRA and what it means for providers is imperative.