Dive Brief:
- The latest version of a bill to repeal Medicare's sustainable growth rate rules would freeze payment levels through 2023.
- It would eliminate penalties under the Physician Quality Reporting System, Value-Based Payment Modifier and Meaningful Use EMR incentive program by the end of 2016, and replace them with a "value-based performance payment program."
- Physician payments under Medicare will be cut by about 24 percent in 2014 unless Congress, as it has for more than 10 years, takes some action to avoid these cuts.
Dive Insight:
It's about time that Congress ended the yearly battle over SGR-related cuts and focused on quality. Merging existing physician incentive programs is probably a good idea too, as it's likely to require less work and documentation on physicians' part. If legislators to pass the bill, meanwhile, things could ripple out quickly -- after all, historically, commercial health insurers have generally followed CMS's lead. Let's see if the bill has legs; if it does, things could quickly get interesting for doctors.