Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

...and no one should discount this organization's infulence.

The powerful AARP has come out in support of pay-for-performance legislation. If overwhelming support in the House and Senate wasn't enough to guarantee passage of a P4P bill, then the AARP's boost could seal the deal.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) introduced the "Medicare Value Purchasing Act of 2005" with co-sponsor Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT). "This bill creates the financial incentives that reward those providers who deliver that quality care today, and to those who make improvements where they are needed," Grassley said on the Senate floor.

The Grassley-Baucus bill is "an idea whose time has come," said John Rother, the AARP's executive officer for policy and strategy. Using payment incentives to improve performance will spell better care for older and disabled Americans, he added.

Quality Data Tied To Pay

In 2007, the Grassley-Baucus bill would give the full payment amount only to physicians who report quality data, while the rest would receive a 2 percent cut. And the Department of Health and Human Services would make that data available to the public, but not before physicians had a chance to view and correct the data about them. The secretary of HHS may make exceptions to the data-sharing rule based on the size or specialty of practices.

The Grassley-Baucus bill would skim 1 percent off the conversion factor for all physician payments in 2008, and that would rise by .25 percent per year until it reached 2.0 percent in 2012 and succeeding years. That money would go to reward providers who: