Got an idea on how to reduce administrative burden to help reduce the cost of delivering health care? The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services wants to hear from you.
In a request for information published June 6, the agency seeks parties across the health care spectrum “to recommend further changes to rules, policies, and procedures that would shift more of clinicians’ time and our health care system’s resources from needless paperwork to high-quality care that improves patient health,” CMS officials said in a statement.
The request for information, part of the agency’s Patients Over Paperwork initiative, seeks suggestions on how to reduce hassles associated with reporting and documentation, coding, prior authorization, rural issues, dual eligible patients, enrollment/eligibility determination and the agency’s own process for issuing regulations and policies.
“Patients over Paperwork has made great inroads in clearing away needlessly complex, outdated, or duplicative requirements that drain clinicians’ time but contribute little to quality of care or patient health,” CMS Administrator Seema Verma said in a statement. “Our goal is to ensure that doctors are spending more time with their patients and less time in administrative tasks.”
The request for information is scheduled to published in the Federal Register on June 11. Comments are due to the agency on Aug. 12. Comments can be made at www.regulations.gov and should refer to file code CMS-6082-NC.
AGA will submit comments to CMS on this issue given the huge burden that prior authorization plays in practices and the time that it takes away from providing care to patients. In the meantime, ask your legislator to support Improving Seniors Access to Timely Care Act of 2019, which was recently introduced in Congress to streamline the prior authorization process in the Medicare Advantage program to relieve the administrative burdens this poses for physicians and help patients receive quicker access to the medical care they need. Learn more at http://ow.ly/tJfX30oW5l7.
SOURCE: Federal Register, CMS-6082-NC, https://federalregister.gov/d/2019-12215.
