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)	Date	Appeared In
Hospital inpatient and outpatient services (3) The Secretary should improve the form and accompanying instructions for collecting data on uncompensated care in the Medicare cost report and require hospitals to report using the revised form as soon as possible.	Hospital	March 2007	March 2007 - Chapter 2A
Hospital inpatient and outpatient services The Congress should increase payment rates for the acute inpatient and outpatient prospective payment systems in 2007 by the projected increase in the hospital market basket index less half of the Commission’s expectation for productivity growth.	Hospital	March 2006	March 2006 - Chapter 2A
Payment for pharmacy handling costs in hospital outpatient departments (A) The Secretary should establish separate, budget-neutral payments to cover the costs that hospitals incur for handling separately paid drugs, biologicals, and radiopharmaceuticals.	Drugs, Devices, and Tests Hospital	June 2005	June 2005 - Chapter 6
Payment for pharmacy handling costs in hospital outpatient departments (B) The Secretary should: * Define a set of handling fee APCs that group drugs, biologicals, and radiopharmaceuticals based on attributes of the products that affect handling costs; * Instruct hospitals to submit charges for those APCs; and * Base payment rates for the handling fee APCs on submitted charges, reduced to costs.	Drugs, Devices, and Tests Hospital	June 2005	June 2005 - Chapter 6
The Medicare Advantage program (D) The Congress should remove the effect of payments for indirect medical education from the Medicare Advantage plan benchmarks.	Hospital Part C (Medicare Advantage)	June 2005	June 2005 - Chapter 3
Hospital inpatient and outpatient services (1) The Congress should increase payment rates for the inpatient prospective payment system by the projected increase in the hospital market basket index less 0.4 percent for fiscal year 2006.	Hospital	March 2005	March 2005 - Chapter 2A
Hospital inpatient and outpatient services (2) The Congress should increase payment rates for the outpatient prospective payment system by the project increase in the hospital market basket index less 0.4 percent for calendar year 2006.	Hospital	March 2005	March 2005 - Chapter 2A
Hospital inpatient and outpatient services (3) The Congress should extend hold-harmless payments under the outpatient prospective payment system for rural sole community hospitals and other rural hospitals with 100 or fewer beds through calendar year 2006.	Hospital Regional issues	March 2005	March 2005 - Chapter 2A
Strategies to improve care: Pay for performance and information technology (A) The Congress should establish a quality incentive payment policy for hospitals in Medicare.	Delivery system reforms Hospital Quality	March 2005	March 2005 - Chapter 4
Strategies to improve care: Pay for performance and information technology (B) CMS should require hospitals to identify which secondary diagnoses were present on admission on their claims forms.	Hospital	March 2005	March 2005 - Chapter 4

GAO makes MedPAC commissioner appointments: