While advocacy and physician groups alike, including the American Medical Association, are calling on CMS to rethink much of its 2,000 page 2024 Medicare physician payment schedule document, including its 3.36 percent physician pay cut, there are a handful of things the AMA says CMS has done right for 2024, according to a Sept. 29 report.
Here are the five new proposed CMS policies that the AMA considers wins for 2024:
1. CMS has proposed maintaining the waiver of geographic and originating site restrictions related to telehealth through the end of 2024. The waiver, which began during the COVID-19 pandemic, allows Medicare beneficiaries to connect with physicians anywhere in the U.S. from home. This creates flexibility in patients' access to care.
2. CMS has proposed extending payment for audio-only telehealth services, increasing remote patient monitoring capabilities.
3. CMS has included coverage of the hemoglobin A1C test for diabetes and prediabetes screenings, eliminating cost barriers to preventive testing.
4. CMS has proposed the pause of the appropriate-use criteria program, which would include rescinding current program regulations until modifications can be made. The AUC is often considered burdensome and associated with technical challenges and workflow disruptions, according to the AMA.
5. CMS is enforcing a one-year delay on its plan to only allow the physician or nonphysician health professional who spends more than half of the total time with a patient during a shared evaluation and management visit to bill for that encounter.