HHS wants to end or significantly lessen the reporting requirements for physicians under the Merit-based Incentive Payment System by using claims data, Secretary Alex Azar said at a Senate Finance Committee meeting Thursday, according a report from Morning Consult.
The idea was introduced in President Donald Trump's 2019 budget, which was released Monday. The proposal suggested CMS assess clinician performance using claims data and patient surveys, eliminating the need for physicians to report, according to Morning Consult.
Many physicians feel MIPS requires a lot of burdensome administrative work with little benefit, Tim Gronniger, senior vice president of strategy and development at Caravan Health, told Becker's. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, which advises Congress on Medicare, voted in January to eliminate the program largely because it felt the program was burdensome and the reporting measures were neither meaningful nor comparable across clinicians.
However, MedPAC's Paul Ginsburg, PhD, told Morning Consult claims-based measures have disadvantages, largely because it can be difficult to pinpoint which clinicians contributed to a beneficiary's quality of care.
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