The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) continues to work to advocate for changes to Medicare physician payment through an ongoing collaboration with the American Medical Association (AMA) and by launching independent efforts to highlight the specific challenges to sleep medicine professionals. While the online campaign, established for members to encourage Congressional leaders to support HR 2474 is still active, the AASM has also done the following:

  • The AASM signed onto a recent letter to the GOP Doctors Caucus Co-Chairs, Greg Murphy (R-NC), Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), and Michael Burgess (R-TX), in support of a discussion draft of legislation to reform the budget neutrality policies applied to the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule. All organizations that have signed onto the letter, including the AASM, hope this proposal will generate bipartisan support from the key House and Senate committees with jurisdiction over the Medicare program. Topics discussed in the draft include:
    • Updating the budget neutrality threshold
    • Budget neutrality corrections for overestimates and underestimates in utilization
    • Timely updates to direct costs used to calculate practice expense RVUs
    • Limitation on year-to-year conversion factor variance
  • Several AASM Coding & Compliance Committee volunteers are preparing for the first Health Policy Hill Day, which will take place Nov. 16, 2023. Members of the committee will meet with members of Congress to share the urgent need for physician payment reform, highlighting the specific impact of consistently declining payments on sleep medicine professionals and sleep facilities.

Questions about the AASM’s physician payment reform efforts may be sent to coding@aasm.org.