The Impact of Changes in Medicare's Physician Payment System on Critical Care.

In 2015 President Obama signed the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) which repealed the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) mechanism for Medicare physician reimbursement and mandated that CMS develop alternative payment methodologies to "reward health care providers for giving better care not more just more care." MACRA makes 3 major changes to Medicare reimbursements: (1) it ends the SGR formula; (2) it establishes a new framework to reward physicians based on performance and health outcomes rather than volume; and (3) it aims to combine existing quality reporting programs into one streamlined system. Beginning in 2019, physicians must enter one of two new tracks for payment: the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) or Alternative Payment Models (APMs). SCCM has a unique opportunity as the largest multidisciplinary critical care organization to comment upon and, ideally, to help develop the new physician payment models specifically for critical care services. The time is now for SCCM and its individual members to become involved in the process.