Lieberman, Collins Introduce Bipartisan Quality Care Amendments

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Senators Joe Lieberman (ID-CT) and Susan Collins (R-ME) today introduced a bipartisan health care reform amendment package to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that aims to enhance the quality of care, contain costs, and improve delivery system reforms, efficiency, and transparency.

"All too much of the Senate debate on health care reform has been divided along partisan lines," said Lieberman. "This bipartisan amendment package will strengthen health care reform, improve patient care, encourage consumer choice, create a more efficient health care delivery system, and contain the increasing costs of health care."

"Our amendment is intended to further three goals: reduce costs, increase transparency, and improve quality," said Collins. Our package will strengthen the delivery system reforms in the underlying bill and help us to move closer to our goal of a high-value health care system that is less costly, more efficient, and produces better outcomes."

Below are brief descriptions of each amendment in the Lieberman/Collins package:

1. Claims processes: Insurers must provide a statement relating to claims procedures as part of the uniform explanation of coverage documents for consumers. This includes revealing the percentage of claims that are annually denied and the percentage of denials that are overturned.

2. National pilot program on payment bundling: Requires the Secretary to speed up the establishment of the national program on bundling by one year to January 1, 2012. Gives the Secretary of HHS greater authority to expand implementation of the program without Congressional approval. (this is the same authority the Secretary retains in the CMS Innovation Center). If the Secretary does not exercise that authority, this amendment moves up the date of reporting to Congress by one year to January 1, 2015 at which time the Secretary must submit a plan to Congress to expand the program if the Secretary deems that such an expansion will improve quality of care and reduce spending.

3. CMS "clean-up": There are countless pilot and demonstration programs sitting at CMS that have never been tested or, after piloting, have never been assessed or expanded more broadly. This amendment will streamline these programs and require the Secretary to submit a strategic plan to Congress outlining which programs are deemed necessary. Those deemed unnecessary are terminated and Congress may overturn this decision. Those deemed valuable must be accompanied with a plan of testing and/or implementation and are included under the authority given to the Secretary in the CMS Innovation Center.

4. Hospital acquired infections: The penalty for hospitals is increased one percent to 2% for the worst performing hospitals with respect to avoidable infections acquired during hospital stays. The penalty is also moved up 2 years to FY2013. All savings generated from this penalty will stay in the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund to extend its solvency.

5. Physician quality reporting made publicly available: Quality measures selected by the Secretary, in consultation with the Physician Payment Advisory Committee, may be made available to consumers on the newly authorized Physician Compare website. The Secretary is encouraged to identify providers performing in the top 50/60/70/80th percentiles as compared to their peers. The Secretary may then use funds from the CMS Innovation Center to reward Medicare beneficiaries, who choose high performing, efficient physician providers.