Washington, D.C. – Over 600 health systems, hospitals, physician practices, health clinics, and ACOs announced their support the Value in Health Care Act, introduced earlier this year by U.S. Representatives Darin LaHood (IL-16) and Suzan DelBene (WA-01). The bill would make commonsense changes to the program parameters of Medicare’s Alternative Payment Models (APMs) to incentivize participation in Accountable Care Organizations (ACO) and improve services for seniors and their families. In a letter, the stakeholders outline their strong support for the bipartisan legislation and stress the importance passing key provisions by the end of the year.
"The Value in Health Care Act is a commonsense proposal that includes substantive reforms to encourage and support greater participation by healthcare providers in ACO’s. The Value in Health Care Act would encourage more providers to join these models and accelerate this change, leading to improved quality of care and health outcomes for seniors," said LaHood and DelBene. "As Congress works towards the end of the year, it is critical that we pass this bipartisan legislation to expand access to coordinated and comprehensive care."
In the letter, the stakeholders write: "This bipartisan legislation includes a two-year extension of MACRA’s original 5 percent advanced APM incentives and adjusts the one-size-fits-all approach to revenue qualification thresholds to ensure that physicians and other clinicians continue to participate in APMs. These two crucial policy changes will help facilitate the continued transition to advanced APM arrangements while gradually increasing the associated revenue qualifications for incentive payments."
In July, LaHood and DelBene joined by U.S. Representatives Brad Wenstrup (OH-02), Kim Schrier (WA-08), Larry Bucshon, M.D. (IN-08), and Earl Blumenauer (OR-03) introduced the Value in Health Care Act.
The Value in Health Care Act would make the following changes to the APM and ACO parameters:
- Provides a multi-year commitment to reforming care delivery by extending MACRA’s 5 percent advanced APM incentive payments for 2 years to continue to encourage the movement to value.
- Establishes guardrails for CMS to ensure that the process to set financial benchmarks is transparent and appropriately accounts for regional variations in spending to prevent arbitrary winners and losers.
- Removes barriers to ACO participation by eliminating arbitrary program distinctions so all participants are participating on a level playing field.
- Supports fair and accurate benchmarks by modifying performance metrics so participants aren’t competing against their own successes in providing better care.
- Incentivizes participation in Advanced APMs by extending the annual lump sum participation bonus for an additional two years.
- Corrects arbitrary thresholds for Advanced APM qualification to better reflect the existing progress of the value-based movement and to encourage bringing more patients into this model of care.
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