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TMA FEATURE

• Ask physicians to provide extensive price and charge data measures, data submission mechanisms, and submission
that has little or no applicability to the Medicare program; processes;

• Reduce payments for E&M services provided at stand- • Reduce the bonus points available for small practices;
alone office visits on the same day as a procedure;
• Refuse to hold physicians harmless for data collection and
• Continue to judge physicians’ cost and quality perform- submission errors made by outside vendors; and
ance without appropriately risk-adjusting their scores • Force practices to accept more risk than they can finan-
based on patients’ demographic or socioeconomic charac-
cially manage if they wish to earn bonus payments under
teristics that have been proven to correlate with poor health an Advanced Alternative Payment Model (APM).
outcomes;
• Double the number of points a physician must earn to
Finally, because of “the overall program complexity of the QPP
avoid a Medicare payment penalty;
and annual changes to data requirements, terminology, and policies
• Neither expand the number of quality measures a practice that are not finalized until two months before each performance
may choose from nor reduce the minimum number (six) period,” TMA said CMS should simplify and improve the educa-
of measures on which a practice may report — all while tional materials it provides to help physicians and groups succeed
planning to further reduce the number of available meas- under the QPP.
ures over the next few years; “Physicians report that learning about and navigating the MIPS
and APM pathways is very challenging, confusing, or simply not
• Continue to rate physicians based on costs of services that
feasible,” Drs. Flores and Kahn wrote.
are completely unrelated to any medical care that the
physician may have provided, ordered, or recommended;
Steve Levine is vice president of communications for the Texas Medical
• Completely replace the terms it uses to describe its quality Association.

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