CMS should do more to free independent practices and providers from economic burdens and unfair practices because these smaller groups are best-positioned to move toward value-based medicine, doctors groups and startups urged in a letter today to Administrator Seema Verma. As part of the agency’s deliberations over the future of the CMS innovation center and payment reform, the agency should allow independent practices to take more risk in value-based pay models, and promote competition between small practices and big hospital systems, says the letter from the American Academy of Family Physicians, the Medical Group Management Association, startup Aledade and four others.
It could promote competition by cracking down on unfair practices like data-blocking, and by allowing physicians to offer Medicare Advantage plans, the letter says. This would allow physicians to expand their services into new markets will freeing them from unfair burdens.