MedPAC Commissioners Propose Replacing MIPS

During the January meeting of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), staff and Commissioners discussed the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), among other hot topics. The commissioners proposed to eliminate the current Merit-based Incentive Payment System and in its place put a new voluntary value program in fee-for-service Medicare in which clinicians can elect to be measured as part of a voluntary group and clinicians in the voluntary groups can qualify for a value payment based on their group’s performance on a set of population-based measures. Two commissioners did vote against the proposal, with several others expressing concern about developing a new voluntary program, but overall, the recommendation was approved. During the staff presentation by Kate Bloniarz, Ariel Winter, and David Glass, the Commission’s concerns with MIPS from the December meeting were highlighted, especially the fact that MIPS does not meaningfully measure for quality and proves to be overly burdensome on physicians, outweighing the potential for savings. Kate Bloniarz explained that MIPS will not succeed in helping beneficiaries choose physicians or efficiently reward physicians based on value due to inadequate performance measuring metrics. Therefore, the staff proposed that MIPS should be replaced by a new voluntary value program (VVP) that would require physicians to form, and be judged in, small groups based on a set of population health measures. While a VVP would...
Source: Policy and Medicine - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs