The American Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy petitioned Congress to reject the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission's recommendation to eliminate the Merit-based Incentive Payment System and establish the Voluntary Value Program in its place.
Here's what you should know.
1. The society said it is "too soon" to write off MIPS, like MedPAC has done.
2. ASGE rejected MedPAC's position that all physicians should be assessed against a set of population-based quality measures.
The group said, "Such a move would disenfranchise physician specialists and damage the quality improvement infrastructure that physicians and their professional societies have worked to build around actionable quality metrics that can have a demonstrable effect on quality and patient outcomes."
3. ASGE did agree with MedPAC that MIPS puts an excessive burden on participating practices and said immediate steps are needed to minimize the burden. However, MedPAC's proposed MIPS alternative, while effective at reducing physician burden, would eliminate flexibility to report on measures that are meaningful to individual practices and scope of service, which is essential in specialty practices.
4. The group asked three things of Congress:
- For CMS to adopt American Medical Association recommendations to revise the MIPS scoring approach and the requirements of the current MACRA statue
- Remove references to payment or patient count thresholds
- Remove Stark law barriers to alternate payment model development and physician participation