On April 11, the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing, “Bolstering Chronic Care through Medicare Physician Payment” to discuss how to update and strengthen Medicare’s guarantee of high-quality health benefits for the next generation of America’s seniors. The CAP submitted a statement for the record outlining a number of policy recommendations to help stabilize the physician payment system, grow the health care workforce, increase oversight of insurer-imposed policies that impact patient care, and look at meaningful sources of health spending to fund reform.

The recommendations include:

• Pass legislation to provide an inflationary update to the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule.
• Pass legislation to eliminate, revise, or replace the budget neutrality requirements in Medicare.
• Pass legislation to maintain meaningful quality measures to enhance health outcomes and improve the quality of care for patients, their families, and various health care entities.
• Pass legislation to improve stakeholder participation in the development of new payment models.
• Pass legislation requiring physician-focused payment model committee (PTAC) submitters to consult participating and affected specialties prior to model submission so that the PTAC can make recommendations on models that are truly physician-focused and enable meaningful contribution of their participants in enhancing the care of patients.
• Pass legislation requiring that traditional MIPS options be maintained for single specialty practices to ensure that private/independent practices of all sizes remain a viable option for physicians.
• Pass The Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act
• Pass The Conrad State 30 and Physician Access Reauthorization Act

The CAP and its members lobbied for several of these provisions during the 2024 Pathologists Leadership Summit and Hill Day.

The CAP encouraged the committee to look at waste and consolidation in the health care system as a potential source of revenue to stabilize the payment system and grow the workforce in lieu of site neutral policies.