Up against an April 1 deadline that would see Medicare payments to physicians plunge by nearly 24%, a bipartisan group of Congressional negotiators introduced legislation that would repeal Medicare’s sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula and replace it with an annual 0.5% pay increase for five years. The proposed legislation contains additional provisions designed to transition Medicare from a pay-per-procedure system to one that promotes value through alternative payment methods (APMs) and rewards physicians for engaging with APMs. Those provisions include:
- A consolidation of three existing Medicare quality programs into one
- Incentives for care coordination
- Involvement by physicians in developing clinical guidelines, performance measures, and APMs
- Making provider-specific quality and utilization data more publicly accessible
Before we hail this as the epitome of bipartisan success, it should be noted that the legislation in its current form does not detail how Congress would pay for a permanent SGR repeal, which is estimated to cost between $120 billion and $150 billion. That significant detail will be debated if and when the full membership of both chambers considers the bill. Congress has been at similar SGR crossroads before and ended up passing short-term “patches” without permanently revising what everyone agrees is a failed formula.