The AASM joined almost 120 organizations in signing on to a letter from the American Medical Association (AMA) urging Congressional leaders to implement technical improvements to the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) to improve the program and ensure the success of participating physicians in the future. The letter recommends implementing positive payment adjustments for physicians to replace the payment freeze over the next six years while also extending the advanced alternative payment model (APM) bonus payments for an additional six years.

The AASM also supports other proposed changes including:

  • Encouraging CMS to base scoring on multi-category measures to make Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) more clinically meaningful, while also reducing silos between each of the four MIPS categories, and creating a more unified program;
  • Requesting that CMS allow pay-for-reporting on new measures or when significant refinements to a measure or composite have been made (precedent already exists for introducing measures via pay-for-reporting in other value-based purchasing programs);
  • Suggesting that CMS providing authority for the Physician-focused Payment Model Technical Advisory Committee to provide technical assistance and data analyses to stakeholders who are developing proposals for its review.

Find more tools and resources in the coding and reimbursement section of the AASM website.