Medical Oncology Association of
Southern California
P.O. Box 161
Upland, CA 91785
Phone: (909) 985-9061
Fax: (909) 985-8581
email: moasc@moasc.org
|
|
|
MOASC would like to recognize and thank the following sponsors for their continued support of MOASC:
|
|
|
|
McClellan Discusses Proposals to Prevent Payment Cuts
Lawmakers might enact changes to the Medicare physician payment formula in time to reverse payment rate reductions scheduled to take effect in January 2006, CMS Administrator Mark McClellan said Monday while distributing a "quality-improvement roadmap" for Medicare, The Hill reports. At a press briefing, McClellan said he has been working with lawmakers and physician organizations to develop proposals to prevent the payment cut and to repeal the formula currently used to set physician payment rates. One change that "can be made in time to prevent next year's cut" is instituting a system in which physicians are rewarded for providing quality care, McClellan said.
The quality-improvement roadmap he distributed Monday included several pay-for-performance proposals that "resemble those espoused" by House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee Chair Nancy Johnson (R-Conn.) and Senate Finance Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), The Hill reports.?
"What I don't think is going to happen this year is just adding" funds to Medicare to increase physician payments, as has been done in years past, McClellan said. He added that if Congress does not enact changes to the Medicare physician payment system itself, CMS can act on its own to lessen the impact of the scheduled payment cut and promote higher-quality care. "There's plenty we can do without legislation," he said (Young, The Hill, 7/26).
Other Strategies
In addition to the pay-for-performance proposal, the roadmap McClellan distributed included four other quality-improvement strategies for Medicare that CMS will coordinate. One strategy involves creating and strengthening partnerships within CMS, HHS, other federal and state agencies and private-sector providers. The roadmap says the partnerships seek "large improvements in specific areas where large quality gaps have been demonstrated and stakeholders have identified specific steps to improve performance."?
Another strategy outlined by McClellan focuses on how to measure quality, saying that 17 existing hospital quality standards developed by several organizations will be expanded to address such issues as patient satisfaction and post-operative care.?
The third strategy involves publishing performance data and developing new payment methods through Medicare Quality Improvement Organizations in each state, while the fourth seeks to improve patients' access to new medical technologies and improve measurements of the technologies' effectiveness. McClellan also said Medicare is "definitely on track" to use data from the new prescription drug benefit to measure the effectiveness of drugs and their distribution through the benefit. "By 2007, you'll start seeing analyses done and reports coming out," he added (CQ HealthBeat [1], 7/25).
|
|
|
|
Position: Medical Director, Oncology, New York , NY
|
|
|
