11/8/2013 – Medicare Physician Payment Reform: An Analysis Of The New Congressional Proposal

On October 31, 2013 the House Ways & Means and Senate Finance Committees unveiled a bicameral and bipartisan press release and Discussion Draft of a proposal to repeal the SGR (sustainable growth rate) update to professional fees and replace it with: (1) reforms for future fee-for-service (FFS); (2) incentives for alternative payment models (APMs); and (3) provisions regarding care coordination, relative valuation, service use, and data availability. After a decade of simply “kicking the SGR down the road” with last-minute and temporary authorizations, a “permanent fix” to this “fundamentally broken” program will be universally welcome. The task at hand: analyzing the elements of what is proposed to replace it.

Read the full analysis at Health Affairs.