Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015

Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015
Great Seal of the United States
Long title An Act To amend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to repeal the Medicare sustainable growth rate and strengthen Medicare access by improving physician payments and making other improvements, to reauthorize the Children's Health Insurance Program, and for other purposes
Nicknames Permanent Doc Fix
Enacted by the 114th United States Congress
Citations
Public law Pub.L. 114–10
Codification
Acts amended Social Security Act, Balanced Budget Act of 1997
Legislative history
  • Introduced in the House as H.R. 2 by Michael C. Burgess (R-TX) on March 24, 2015
  • Passed the House on March 26, 2015 (392–37)
  • Passed the Senate on April 14, 2015 (92–8)
  • Signed into law by President Barack Obama on April 16, 2015

Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA), (H.R. 2, Pub.L. 114–10) commonly called the Permanent Doc Fix, establishes a new way to pay doctors who treat Medicare patients, revising the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. The reform is the largest in scale on the American health care system since the Affordable Care Act in 2010. It fixes the way Medicare doctors are reimbursed, fills in a funding gap and extends a popular children's insurance program, CHIP.[1]

MACRA related regulations also address incentives for use of health IT by physicians and other care providers.

Under MACRA, the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Secretary is tasked with implementation of a Merit Based Incentive (MIP) an incentive program which consolidates the three existing incentive programs into one for eligible physicians.[2] The legislation also allows for Advanced Alternative Payment Models (APM) in 2026 the conversion factor for both programs will be set at 0.75% followed by each subsequent year.[3]

The Government Accountability Office in partnership with the DHHS are set to assist in the implementation of nationwide electronic health records (EHR), while simultaneously comparing and selecting of such programs for providers; the EHR goal is set for December 31, 2018 under MACRA.[2]

The U.S. is set to transition from a fee for service system, which allowed physicians and providers to bill Medicare and Medicaid for services they provided to their patients, with a pay for performance based system using MIP, APM, and Accountable Care Organizations (ACO).[4]

References

  1. ↑ "Obama signs largest healthcare bill since Obamacare into law". RT. RT. Retrieved 2 August 2016.
  2. 1 2 "Congress.Gov". Congress.gov. Library of Congress. 2015-04-16. Retrieved Nov 15, 2016.
  3. ↑ "MACRA". CMS.gov. Retrieved Nov 15th, 2016. Check date values in: |access-date= (help)
  4. ↑ "The Basics of the SGR Replacement Bill". Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Apr 2, 2015. Retrieved Nov 15, 2016.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/19/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.