MedPAC Releases June 2024 Report to Congress on Medicare Payment Policy

The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) released its June 2024 Report to Congress (PDF), which included six chapters focused on Medicare payment policy. The chapter topics included Medicare’s Acute Hospital Care at Home program, payment for software technologies in Medicare, ways to lower Medicare payment rates for select conditions in inpatient rehabilitation facilities, Medicare Advantage, and updating clinician payments and incentivizing participation in alternative payment models.  

The Medicare Advantage chapters touched on provider networks, prior authorization, and data sources, such as encounter data for measuring health care utilization by Medicare Advantage enrollees. In addition, the commission considered two approaches to update Physician Fee Schedule payment rates based on inflation and ultimately favored the second approach, which would update the practice expense portion of the rate by the Medicare Economic Index minus 1 percentage point.