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Advocacy Update: Congress Asked for Feedback on MACRA. Here's What ASNC Said.
Last week, ASNC sent a letter to a group of bipartisan House of Representatives lawmakers who have requested input from stakeholders about steps Congress can take to stabilize the Medicare payment system while ensuring successful value-based care incentives are in place. In response, ASNC President Dennis A. Calnon, MD, MASNC, called on Congress to repeal the Medicare Appropriate Use Criteria (AUC) Program for advanced diagnostic imaging and work with medical societies to find new ways to integrate AUC into practice with a focus on low-value imaging.
ASNC reminded the lawmakers that, with the passage of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) in 2015, Congress consolidated the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' legacy quality reporting programs into the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) to reduce the burden associated with physician participation in separate quality programs.“Unfortunately, the AUC Program has remained as an administratively burdensome stand-alone program, delinked from MIPS and alternative payment models (APMs) and any measurement of patient outcomes,” ASNC told Congress.
The physician community is urging Congress to consider legislative improvements to the MIPS and APM programs and, in the process, repeal the Medicare AUC Program. ASNC is asking Congress to collaborate with medical societies to identify ways in which the Quality Payment Program can be maximized to allow flexibility while encouraging AUC consultation by ordering professionals of clinician-developed, evidence-based AUC.