Commission Recommendations
MedPAC makes recommendations to the Congress and to the Secretary of Health and Human Services on issues affecting the administration of the Medicare program. With its recommendations, the Commission strives to improve the delivery of care, while ensuring financial stability and maximizing value for the program. After extensive analysis and evaluation, our recommendations are discussed and voted on by Commissioners in our public meetings. Recommendations are typically published in two main reports, released in March and June of each year.
| Recommendations | Topic(s) | Date |
|---|---|---|
Care coordination programs for dual-eligible beneficiaries (5)The Congress should direct the Secretary to publish select quality measures on Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) providers and develop appropriate quality measures to enable PACE providers to participate in the Medicare Advantage quality bonus program by 2015. |
|
June 2012 |
Ambulatory surgical center services (2)The Congress should direct the Secretary to implement a value-based purchasing program for ambulatory surgical center services no later than 2016. |
|
March 2012 |
Enhancing Medicare’s technical assistance to and oversight of providers (5)The Congress should require the Secretary to expand interventions that promote systemic remediation of quality problems for persistently low-performing providers. |
|
June 2011 |
Enhancing Medicare’s technical assistance to and oversight of providers (6)The Secretary should establish a public recognition program for high-performing providers that participate in collaboratives or learning networks, or otherwise act as mentors, to improve the quality of lower performing providers. |
|
June 2011 |
Home health services (2B)The Secretary should identify categories of patients who are likely to receive the greatest clinical benefit from home health care and develop outcomes measures that evaluate the quality of care for each category of patient. |
|
March 2010 |
Hospital inpatient and outpatient services (1)The Congress should increase payment rates for the acute inpatient and outpatient prospective payment systems in 2011 by the projected rate of increase in the hospital market basket index, concurrent with implementation of a quality incentive payment program. |
|
March 2010 |
Report on comparing quality among Medicare Advantage plans and between Medicare Advantage and fee-for-service Medicare (2)The Secretary should collect, calculate, and report quality measurement results in Medicare Advantage at the level of the geographic units the Commission has recommended for Medicare Advantage payments, and calculate fee-for-service quality results for purposes of comparing Medicare Advantage and fee-for-service using the same geographic units. |
|
March 2010 |
Report on comparing quality among Medicare Advantage plans and between Medicare Advantage and fee-for-service Medicare (3)The Secretary should have all health plan types in Medicare Advantage report on the same basis, including reporting measures based on medical record review, and the Congress should remove the statutory exceptions for preferred provider organizations and private fee-for-service plans with respect to such reporting. |
|
March 2010 |
Report on comparing quality among Medicare Advantage plans and between Medicare Advantage and fee-for-service Medicare (4)The Secretary should collect and report the same survey-based data that are collected in Medicare Advantage through the Health Outcomes Survey for the Medicare fee-for-service population, unless the Secretary determines that such data cannot meaningfully differentiate quality among Medicare Advantage plans and between fee-for-service and Medicare Advantage. |
|
March 2010 |
Report on comparing quality among Medicare Advantage plans and between Medicare Advantage and fee-for-service Medicare (5)The Secretary should expeditiously publish specifications for forthcoming Medicare Advantage plan encounter data submissions to obtain the data needed to calculate patient outcome measures. |
|
March 2010 |