An official website of the United States Government —

Here’s how you know

Official websites use .gov

A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS

A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Advising the Congress on Medicare issues
MedPAC > Recommendations

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) Publication

Hospice services

For fiscal year 2022, the Congress should eliminate the update to the 2021 Medicare base payment rates for hospice and wage adjust and reduce the hospice aggregate cap by 20 percent.

  • Post-acute care

March 2021 - Chapter 11

Hospital inpatient and outpatient services

For fiscal year 2022, the Congress should update the 2021 Medicare base payment rates for acute care hospitals by 2 percent.

  • Hospital

March 2021 - Chapter 3

Inpatient rehabilitation facility services

For fiscal year 2022, the Congress should reduce the 2021 Medicare base payment rate for inpatient rehabilitation facilities by 5 percent.

  • Post-acute care

March 2021 - Chapter 9

Long-term care hospital services

For fiscal year 2022, the Secretary should increase the 2021 Medicare base payment rate for long-term care hospitals by 2 percent.

  • Post-acute care

March 2021 - Chapter 10

Outpatient dialysis services

For calendar year 2022, the Congress should eliminate the update to the 2021 Medicare end-stage renal disease prospective payment system base rate.

  • Ambulatory care settings

March 2021 - Chapter 6

Physician and other health professional services

For calendar year 2022, the Congress should update the 2021 Medicare payment rates for physician and other health professional services by the amounts determined under current law.

  • Physicians and other health professionals

March 2021 - Chapter 4

Skilled nursing facility services

For fiscal year 2022, the Congress should eliminate the update to the 2021 Medicare base payment rates for skilled nursing facilities.

  • Post-acute care

March 2021 - Chapter 7

Challenges in maintaining and increasing savings from accountable care organizations

The Secretary should use the same set of national provider identifiers to compute both performance-year and baseline assignment for accountable care organizations in the Medicare Shared Savings Program.

  • Delivery system reforms

June 2020 - Chapter 2

Improving Medicare’s end-stage renal disease prospective payment system (1)

The Congress should direct the Secretary to eliminate the end-stage renal disease prospective payment system’s transitional drug add-on payment adjustment for new drugs in an existing end-stage renal disease functional category.

  • Ambulatory care settings

June 2020 - Chapter 7

Improving Medicare’s end-stage renal disease prospective payment system (2)

The Secretary should replace the current low-volume and rural payment adjustments in the end-stage renal disease prospective payment system with a single adjustment for dialysis facilities that are isolated and consistently have low volume, where low-volume criteria are empirically derived.

  • Ambulatory care settings
  • Regional issues

June 2020 - Chapter 7