The Medicare Payment Advisory Committee (MedPAC) has released its June 2009 report to Congress. The report focuses on how incentives in the Medicare payment system should be amended to reward value instead of volume.
The report explores how voluntary and mandatory versions of accountable care organizations (ACOs) could promote care coordination, increase quality, and lower cost growth. Bonuses would be awarded to ACOs that meet quality and cost targets, while poor-performing ACOs would receive lower Medicare payments. The report also discusses traditional Medicare benefit design and whether cost sharing can be used as a tool for increasing the value of care while ensuring beneficiary access to services.
Other issues addressed by the MedPAC report include graduate medical education; the relationship between physicians’ financial interest in imaging equipment and spending on imaging tests; options for reforming the Medicare Advantage program; results of CMS’s chronic care demonstration programs; and CMS’s preliminary estimate of the physician update for 2010.
Read the report.
