HHS urged to reconsider certain quality reporting changes for Medicare ACOs

Eleven organizations representing physicians and hospitals, including the AHA, today urged Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra to reconsider certain quality reporting changes to the Medicare Shared Savings Program, which the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services finalized in the 2021 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule. 

“While reducing the number of measures and leveraging electronic data sources for quality reporting are important goals, we have significant concerns about the MSSP quality policies finalized at the very end of 2020,” they wrote. “The policy changes lacked adequate input from the patient, [accountable care organization], physician and hospital communities, and it is unclear how [CMS] determined that the Alternative Payment Model Performance Pathways measures are more appropriate than the current measures on which ACOs are evaluated.”