AHA's Comments on Issues Discussed During the MedPAC November 2021 Meeting

On behalf of our nearly 5,000 member hospitals, health systems and other health care organizations; our clinician partners — including more than 270,000 affiliated physicians, 2 million nurses and other caregivers — and the 43,000 health care leaders who belong to our professional membership groups, the American Hospital Association (AHA) would like to share our thoughts, suggestions and concerns on several items discussed at the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission’s (MedPAC) November 2021 meeting. We appreciate the important and thoughtful work performed to date by the chair, commissioners and staff related to these topics, including policies to support safety-net providers, align payment rates across ambulatory settings and the future of telehealth services.

Regarding the discussions during the November 2021 meeting:

• AHA appreciates MedPAC’s work on safety-net providers, including the recognition that more can be done to support these providers; we suggest three considerations for further deliberations.
• We discuss our strong concerns related to the alignment of payment rates across ambulatory settings. MedPAC’s proposals would cut rural and government hospitals’ Medicare outpatient revenue by almost 25%. Our concerns stem from sustained hardship hospitals would experience under these very large cuts and policies.
• AHA strongly supports MedPAC’s continued conversations on the future of telehealth policies and we offer additional thoughts for consideration.

View the detailed comments below.