Alliance of Speciality Medicine Letter to MedPAC on SGR

During its meeting on September 15, 2011, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) outlined its draft recommendations to replace the current Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula with 10 years of statutory fee schedule updates.

If implemented, the draft recommendations would freeze pay for primary care for 10 years and would cut payments for other services by 5.9 percent for three years, followed by a freeze for the remaining seven years. Learn more »

On September 23, the Alliance of Specialty Medicine sent a letter to Glenn Hackbarth, MD, chairman of MedPAC, expressing its disappointment with the proposed recommendations.

The Alliance fears that access to specialty care for Medicare beneficiaries may be seriously jeopardized if the recommendations are implemented. The Chairman’s recommendations are in addition to already existing cuts such as e-prescribing penalty beginning in 2013, the PQRS penalty beginning in 2015, the value-based modifier, and payment cuts in practice expense RVUs due to adoption of the Physician Practice Information Survey. Read the full letter (PDF, 312K)

MedPAC will release its recommendations in the coming weeks. The Commission plans to vote on the recommendations at its meeting in Washington, DC on October 6-7, 2011.