Bipartisan Bicameral Effort Underway to Advance Medicare Post Acute Reform

Washington, DC - Today, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) and Ranking Member Sandy Levin (D-MI) along with Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Ranking Member Orrin Hatch (R-UT) released a discussion draft titled, here.

Background:

Last year, the Chairmen and Ranking Members of the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees set forth an invitation to stakeholders in the Medicare post-acute care community to provide input on ideas for reforming the system. The resounding theme from the more than 70 letters received was the need for standardized post-acute assessment data across Medicare PAC provider settings.

The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) first raised the need for a common PAC assessment tool in 2005. In the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services was first directed to test the concept of a common standardized assessment tool in the form of the post-acute care reform demonstration. MedPAC also included a recommendation to move forward with a common assessment tool in its March 2014 report.

This policy step is long overdue as the problems with the status quo are clear. Multiple analyses spotlight the wide variation in utilization in all sectors of Medicare post-acute care, as well as vast differences in Medicare and all-payer margins among providers. The substantial variation in spending, quality, and margins within the post-acute sector provides strong motivation for PAC modernization. The IMPACT Act of 2014 moves forward on the longstanding policy goal of collecting standardized data to inform future payment reforms that can better drive quality and efficiency while protecting beneficiary access to appropriate services.

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