MedPAC urged to reconsider certain IME, drug payment proposals

AHA yesterday urged the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission to reconsider certain proposed changes to Medicare payment for indirect medical education and separately payable outpatient drugs, which the commission could vote on later this week. 
 
The association expressed concern the commission was considering a proposal that would redistribute IME payments to teaching hospitals during a global pandemic, and called for “a more granular assessment of the hospital-level impacts” to fully understand what any modifications to the IME program would mean for teaching hospitals and the communities they serve.
 
“Indeed, further reducing Medicare underpayments would exacerbate the financial challenges hospitals are already facing, and limit hospitals’ ability to provide state-of-the-art clinical care and train the next generation of practitioners, even further exacerbating clinician burnout,” AHA said.
 
While AHA supports incentivizing drug makers to produce clinically superior drugs for payment on a pass-through basis, “we are very concerned that the proposed changes for separately payable drugs could harm 340B hospitals and the ability of their patients to access these drugs,” AHA said. “…Further, we are concerned about the lack of evidentiary and data analysis underlying the recommendation.”