NCCS Submits Letters, Joins Cancer Leadership Council and C-P Alliance, in Comments to CMS on Proposed Revisions to Medicare Physician Fee Schedule

NCCS submitted letters to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on its proposed revisions to the Medicare physician fee schedule for calendar year 2016. In our letter, NCCS commended CMS for its efforts to enhance comprehensive care management for certain Medicare beneficiaries.  Through improvements in fee-for-service payments and various demonstration initiatives, CMS has made important strides in enhancing quality of care for many Medicare patients. NCCS strongly supports the Oncology Care Model, a demonstration project to be launched in 2016, because it will improve the care experience of cancer patients and will also foster the transformation of participating practices into patient-centered medical homes.  We have also lent our support to establishment of the transitional care management (TCM) and chronic care management (CCM) codes as these new payment reforms encourage care management.  We offered advice about additional improvements to fee-for-service payment through a separate Medicare service for cancer-care planning and coordination, which could enhance the quality of cancer treatment decision-making and overall quality of care. In addition to our own comments, NCCS signed a letter with other members of the Cancer Leadership Council about cancer care planning and coordination.

Finally, NCCS signed a letter with members of the Consumer-Purchaser Alliance (C-P Alliance), a collaboration of leading consumer, labor, and employer organizations committed to improving the quality and affordability of health care through the use of performance information to guide consumer choice, payment, and quality improvement. The C-P Alliance urged CMS to include consumer and purchaser priorities into the existing payment and reporting programs. Specifically, the groups urged CMS to pursue development, collection, and reporting of high-value measures of clinical and patient-reported outcomes; to require reporting clinician performance at the individual level; and to reward clinicians who deliver high quality and appropriate care efficiently.