FROM NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE
Even given the notable problems and challenges associated with Medicare’s Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), the program should be improved via pilot programs and demonstration projects, according to Gail R. Wilensky, PhD, economist and senior fellow at Project Hope and a former top health aide to President George H.W. Bush.
The Medicare Payment Advisory Committee (MedPAC) is set to recommend to Congress that the MIPS portion of the value-based reforms enacted under the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) be eliminated and replaced with a Voluntary Value Program. MedPAC’s report is due to Congress in March.
“Although I agree with MedPAC about the problems it has identified, I am also concerned about the commission’s proposal,” Dr. Wilensky wrote in an editorial published in the New England Journal of Medicine (doi: 10.1056/NEJMp1801673). She noted that a lack of support from major medical associations, combined with the impending midterm elections, means that it would be challenging to get a legislative fix through Congress.
Read her suggestions on how to improve MIPS in the New England Journal of Medicine.
