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CMS Current Quality-Pay Programs Unlikely To Reward Device Innovations

Under 2015 legislation, CMS is intensely focused on tying payments to quality of care for patients seeing specialists such as gastroenterologists and cardiologists. But because the primary focus of alternative payment plans is on short-term patient outcomes, things like device durability or other long-term impacts from innovation won't easily be rewarded, a Medicare agency official told device-makers May 5.

It's going to be challenging for CMS to measure the quality that innovative devices provide as the Medicare agency moves to adapt physician-focused alternative payment models required by the 2015 Medicare Access and CHIP Reduction Act (MACRA), a CMS official told device-makers May 5.

"We want to be able to incentivize and provide rewards for people involved in true improvement activities … but there are a lot of things called 'improvement activities,' which really...

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