News: Physician groups push for greater MACRA financial incentives, new performance metrics

At a Senate Committee on Finance hearing on May 8, physician groups urged Congress to work with CMS to improve the Medicare Access and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) by establishing new performance measures and providing greater financial incentives for participating providers, JustCoding reported.

Representatives from the American Medical Association (AMA), American Academy of Family Physicians, American College of Surgeons (ACS), American Medical Group Association, and the Brookings Institution submitted statements to the committee, examining successes of the program and how it could be improved.

The representatives generally agreed that MACRA represents an improvement over the Sustainable Growth Rate payment methodology. However, industry leaders argued that current Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) scoring and reporting requirements are overly complex and take away from physicians’ ability to provide patient-centered care.

Several representatives proposed solutions for improving quality reporting requirements under MIPS. For example, Barbara L. McAneny, MD, AMA president, suggested that CMS come up with new performance metrics that allow physicians to focus on activities that align with their workflow and address their patient population needs, rather than focusing on activities that fit into the four “disparate” performance categories.

Frank Opelka, MD, FACS, medical director for quality and health policy at ACS, agreed that the current performance metrics don’t drive quality or reduce costs and proposed to replace the Quality Payment Program structure with an alternative framework for quality measurement.

Several witnesses also pushed for greater payment incentives under MACRA, especially for providers enrolled in an Advanced Alternative Payment Model.

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in JustCoding. Full witness testimonies and a video recording of the hearing is available on the Senate Finance Committee website. To read about recent MACRA updates and news, click here.