The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) has released its June 2013 Report to the Congress on Medicare and the Health Care Delivery System. The report examines a number of potential ways to reform Medicare, including the following:
- Redesigning the Medicare benefit. MedPAC continues to discuss the concept of competitively determined plan contributions (CPC), under which Medicare beneficiaries could receive care through either a private plan or traditional fee-for-service, but the premium paid by the beneficiary could vary depending on the coverage option chosen. The federal government’s payment for a beneficiary’s care would be determined through a competitive process comparing the costs of available options for coverage. The report identifies key issues to be addressed if the Congress wishes to pursue a policy option like CPC, such as how benefits could be standardized for comparability, how to calculate the Medicare contribution, and the structure of subsidies for low-income beneficiaries.
- Reducing Medicare payment differences across sites of care. MedPAC notes that Medicare payment rates often vary for similar services provided to similar patients, simply because they are provided in different sites of care (e.g., physician’s office vs. hospital outpatient department). The report identifies services that may be eligible for equalizing or narrowing payment differences across settings.
- Bundling post-acute care services. MedPAC explores the implications for quality and program spending for different design features of post-acute care payment bundles, such as the services included, the length of time covered by the bundle, and the method of payment.
- Reducing hospital readmissions. MedPAC suggests further refinements to improve incentives for hospitals and generate program savings through reduced readmissions, including proposals to address the effect of random variation on hospitals with small numbers of cases, the inability of the industry to reduce average penalties with improved performance, the correlation of patient income and readmission rates, and the inverse relationship between readmissions and mortality for cardiac patients.
- Payments for hospice services. MedPAC presents information on the prevalence of long-stay patients and the use of hospice services among nursing home patients to inform future hospice payment reforms. MedPAC also provides additional information supporting its March 2009 recommendations to revise the hospice payment system.
- Improving care for dual-eligible beneficiaries. MedPAC discusses the potential role that federally qualified health centers and community health centers can play in coordinating care for Medicare-Medicaid dual-eligible beneficiaries.
In addition to discussing these delivery reforms, the MedPAC report addresses Congressionally-mandated reviews of the following topics: Medicare ambulance add-on payments; geographic adjustment of fee schedule payments for the work effort of physicians and other health professionals; and Medicare payment for outpatient therapy services.