AAFP, Other Groups Respond to Attempts to Overturn CMS Rule

The AAFP, along with the American Academy of Ophthalmology and a number of other medical groups, has responded quickly and forcefully to calls by the American College of Cardiology, or ACC, to overturn a new CMS rule that would provide a 5 percent to 8 percent increase in Medicare physician payment rates for primary care physicians during the next four years.

CMS, which proposed the rule earlier this year, based its recommendations on a new AMA physician practice information survey that was conducted in 2008 and carried out according to strict methodology requirements. The scientific data gathered in the survey also were validated by The Lewin Group, an independent survey firm. According to the ACC, however, the new rule is based on flawed survey data. The organization is lobbying members of Congress in protest against the CMS rule, prompting a response from the AAFP and other physician groups.

In a press release distributed jointly with the American Academy of Ophthalmology and signed by nearly 20 physician-led organizations, AAFP President Lori Heim, M.D., of Vass, N.C., said, "The CMS rule is a fair solution to a long-standing problem."

The implementation of the new rule would end four years of Medicare payment reductions for primary care and other specialties that began in 2005 when CMS adopted external data from only a few subspecialties, according to the release.

"For most specialties, CMS had been using practice cost data that was at least a decade old and does not accurately capture the relative costs faced by different physician practices today," said David Parke II, M.D., CEO of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, in the release. The rule attempts to correct the imbalances of the past by phasing in a redistribution of the payment pool based, in part, on the practice expense data from the survey.

"The new rates are the result of a sound and careful process that had the broad support of medicine," said Heim in the release, which also was signed by the American Association of Orthopedic Surgeons, the American College of Surgeons and the American College of Emergency Physicians, among others. "We are hopeful that Congress will realize that second-guessing the process will not improve patient care or safety and will only reinstate the imbalances that previously existed," said Heim.