AAMC President and CEO Darrell G. Kirch, M.D, April 27 applauded Representatives Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.) and Ann Kuster (D-N.H.) for introducing thePromoting Responsible Opioid Prescribing (PROP) Act of 2016 (H.R. 4499), legislation that would delink the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey’s pain management questions from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)’s calculations of hospital incentive payments under the Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) Program.
In his letter, Dr. Kirch thanked Reps. Mooney and Kuster for introducing this legislation and noted, “While we understand the importance of this survey to inform hospitals of patients’ perspectives, directly linking a patient’s opinion about how his or her pain was treated with how a hospital and physician are paid is counterintuitive, given the severity of the nation’s prescription drug epidemic.”
Moreover, Dr. Kirch highlighted how the “questions related to pain on the HCAHPS survey may inadvertently be contributing to the epidemic by penalizing providers based on the survey responses,” and thanked Reps. Mooney and Kuster for addressing the “unintended consequences” of the survey.
There is also a Senate companion, S. 2758, introduced April 7 by Senators Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)