The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued a Request for Information (RFI) seeking new ideas from the public on how to ease administrative burden and improve healthcare delivery, building on its 2017 Patients over Paperwork initiative. CMS is seeking comments by August 12.
As of January 2019, it’s estimated that that initiative, which streamlined regulations to cut down on “red tape,” has saved the health care system an estimated 40 million hours and $5.7 billion through 2021. The new RFI is an opportunity to share new ideas and continue to build on improvements to health care delivery. CMS is especially interested in ideas to relieve burden and ways to improve:
- Reporting and documentation requirements
- Coding and documentation requirements for Medicare or Medicaid payment
- Prior authorization procedures
- Policies and requirements for rural providers, clinicians, and beneficiaries
- Policies and requirements for dually enrolled (i.e., Medicare and Medicaid) beneficiaries
- Beneficiary enrollment and eligibility determination
- CMS processes for issuing regulations and policies
WSHA encourages members to submit ideas. Please share any ideas submitted to CMS with WSHA Policy Director for Legal Affairs, Jaclyn Greenberg at jaclyng@wsha.org. The RFI is available here. For more information, visit the Patients over Paperwork webpage.
