In December 2014, CMS released a 329-page list of quality measures under consideration for the Medicare program. In a January 13, 2015 comment letter, MedPAC observes that volume of measures under consideration “reinforces our concerns that Medicare’s provider-level measurement activities are accelerating without regard to the costs or benefits of an ever-increasing number of measures.” MedPAC suggests that CMS is “relying on too many clinical process measures that are, at best, weakly correlated with health outcomes.” Moreover, including numerous process measures could reinforce “undesirable payment incentives in FFS Medicare to increase the volume of services and is overly burdensome on providers to report, while yielding limited information to support clinical improvement or beneficiary choice.” While acknowledging that CMS includes more measures than will be adopted in order to solicit comments, MedPAC urges CMS to “carefully consider whether each additional measure would simply reinforce or exacerbate the current system’s problems.”

The following is MedPAC’s count of measures under consideration (note that the largest number of measures under review this year apply to accountable care organizations):Continue Reading MedPAC Voices Concerns about Growing Volume, Burden of Medicare Quality Measures