HELEN News

Congress’s enactment of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) last year repealed Medicare’s sustainable growth rate (SGR) in favor of a new Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) intended to increase quality of care across the United States. The law was designed to shift how health care providers are paid from a volume-based payment system to a value-based system. While well-intentioned, this push raises several concerns. Most notably that providers with higher quality scores tend to also have higher disparities in care among racial and ethnic minorities and other vulnerable populations. On May 9, 2016 CMS released its much anticipated proposed rule to…