The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, a committee that advises Congress on Medicare, wants to revamp hospital quality payment programs.
The committee believes there are currently too many programs, with inappropriate measures that may not be tied to outcomes or consistently reported. In an April 5 presentation, MedPAC proposed a new design: the Hospital Value Incentive Program.
Here are four things to know about the proposal.
1. The HVIP would merge the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program and the Hospital Value-based Purchasing Program and eliminate the Inpatient Quality Reporting Program and the Hospital-acquired Condition Reduction Program. The goal is to simplify these programs, which currently overlap with each other.
2. The HVIP would measure readmissions, mortality, spending and overall patient experience. It would also use all-condition measures, rather than condition-specific measures, in these categories. All-condition measures are believed to be more accurate and give stronger incentives for improvement.
3. The program would set specific performance targets in advance and adjust payment by peer grouping providers with similar patient mixes.
4. The committee believes this model would help eliminate disparities in payment adjustments that stem from serving different patient populations with different risk factors.
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