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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
Medicare payment for ambulance services (1) The Congress should: allow the three temporary ambulance add-on policies to expire; direct the Secretary to rebalance the relative values for ambulance services by lowering the relative value of basic life support nonemergency services and increasing the relative values of other ground transports. Rebalancing should be budget neutral relative to current law and maintain payments… Read more »	Ambulatory care settings	June 2013
Medicare payment for ambulance services (2) The Congress should direct the Secretary to: promulgate national guidelines to more precisely define medical necessity requirements for both emergency and nonemergency (recurring and nonrecurring) ground ambulance transport services; develop a set of national edits based on those guidelines to be used by all claims processors; and identify geographic areas and/or ambulance suppliers and providers… Read more »	Ambulatory care settings	June 2013
Ambulatory surgical center services The Congress should eliminate the update to the payment rates for ambulatory surgical centers for calendar year 2014. The Congress should also require ambulatory surgical centers to submit cost data.	Ambulatory care settings	March 2013
Outpatient dialysis services The Congress should not increase the outpatient dialysis bundled payment rate for calendar year 2014.	Ambulatory care settings	March 2013
Ambulatory surgical center services (1) The Congress should update the payment rates for ambulatory surgical centers by 0.5 percent for calendar year 2013. The Congress should also require ambulatory surgical centers to submit cost data.	Ambulatory care settings	March 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.	Ambulatory care settings Quality	March 2012
Outpatient dialysis services The Congress should update the outpatient dialysis payment rate by 1 percent for calendar year 2013.	Ambulatory care settings	March 2012
Ambulatory surgical centers The Congress should implement a 0.5 percent increase in payment rates for ambulatory surgical center services in calendar year 2012 concurrent with requiring ambulatory surgical centers to submit cost and quality data.	Ambulatory care settings	March 2011
Outpatient dialysis services The Congress should update the outpatient dialysis payment rate by 1 percent for calendar year 2012.	Ambulatory care settings	March 2011
Ambulatory surgical centers The Congress should implement a 0.6 percent increase in payment rates for ambulatory surgical center services in calendar year 2011 concurrent with requiring ambulatory surgical centers to submit cost and quality data	Ambulatory care settings	March 2010