AMA, CMS Lead Discussion on Evolving Healthcare Market Today
By - The American Medical Association (AMA) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) are pairing up to lead a discussion today about the ongoing state of the evolving healthcare market.
The discussion will be held at 5PM (PT) at the J.P. Morgan’s Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, California.
Andy Slavitt, CMS’s Acting Administrator, and James L. Madara, MD, AMA’s CEO and Executive Vice President, will offer their commentary for the healthcare industry.
The discussion later today is aptly named: “A Discussion with CMS & AMA on the Evolving Healthcare Market.”
Following remarks from both Slavitt and Madara, there will be a subsequent chat with Ipstia Smolinski, Capitol Street’s Managing Director.
Watch the event live online here.
Editor's note: Since publication of this article, Slavitt and Madara addressed conference attendees in an hour-long talk. Read more about what they had to say here.
Some brief snapshots of recent AMA / CMS relations
Regarding earlier joint organization efforts, AMA and CMS collaborated last July to announce a flexible joint ICD-10 implementation agreement.
CMS released a series of revisions to this joint announcement shortly after.
Although there was some confusion the AMA/CMS compromise meant a subsequent ICD-10 delay was in the cards, CMS later explained this simply was not the case.
“As we work to modernize our nation’s health care infrastructure, the coming implementation of ICD-10 will set the stage for better identification of illness and earlier warning signs of epidemics, such as Ebola or flu pandemics,” Slavitt stated.
Last month, Steven J. Stack, MD, the AMA’s President, expressed concern regarding CMS’s Physician Compare website. Stack said CMS’s website, with its incomplete and potentially inaccurate information, could potentially mislead patients.
“Given the widespread accuracy issues with the 2014 PQRS calculations, the newly released information is premature. The data inaccuracies and difficulties with CMS' processes grew over the last couple of months and, while CMS has acknowledged these problems, it has failed to address the underlying issues,” Stack asserted.
“Most importantly, consumers visiting the Physician Compare website are likely to get a false impression that it provides accurate quality information for all physicians, when in fact, due to significant data problems, the newly added information covers only about 40,000 physicians.”
Last October, the AMA urged CMS to offer hardship exemptions for Meaningful Use.
Physicians feared they would be unable to meet meaningful use standards since details of Stage 2 modification rule had yet to be released, according to Stack.
“The AMA has regularly stressed that CMS must finalize Meaningful Use modifications well ahead of Oct. 1 to provide the time that physicians need to plan for and accommodate these changes, yet CMS has continued to delay finalizing this rule,” Stack explained.
“As a result, many physicians who were counting on this flexibility will be subject to financial penalties under the rules currently in place.”
