The Physician Clinical Registry Coalition (“PCRC”) recently wrote to Congress requesting that the House Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce Committees and the Senate Finance and HELP Committees convene an oversight hearing (or hearings) to examine the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (“CMS”) implementation of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (“MACRA”) as it relates to Qualified Clinical Data Registries (“QCDRs”) and clinician-led clinical data registries.  MACRA requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services (“Secretary”) to encourage the use of QCDRs for reporting measures under the quality performance category of the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (“MIPS”) program.  MACRA also directs the Secretary to provide Medicare claims data to QCDRs “for purposes of linking such data with clinical outcomes data and performing risk-adjusted, scientifically valid analyses and research to support quality improvement or patient safety.”  Over recent years, however, CMS has established policies that contravene the language and intent of MACRA, including policies that disincentivize meaningful specialty measures.  Therefore, PCRC urged the aforementioned Committees to hold a hearing (or hearings) to examine CMS’s MACRA policies concerning measure testing, data validation requirements, access to claims data, harmonization, topped out measures, credit/incentivization for clinical data and measure testing participation, cooperative agreements, and the MIPS Value Pathway program.

Click here to read the letter to the House Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce Committees.

Click here to read the letter to the Senate Finance and HELP Committees.