Letter to the Hon. Alex Azar, Secretary of Health and Human Services - Support of New Primary Care Payment Model

Letter

Mr. Secretary:

As members of the Congressional Primary Care Caucus, we write to respectfully request your full and fair consideration of the Advanced Primary Care Alternative Payment Model (APC-APM), a proposal that is currently pending your review.

In 2015, the United States Congress passed and the President enacted, the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) (P.L. 114-10). This law aimed to improve the quality and efficiency of health care. A key component of MACRA was the emphasis the law placed on moving a greater percentage of physicians and other health care providers into alternative payment models (APMs). To facilitate the development, testing, and implementation of alternative payment models, Congress established the Physician-Focused Payment Model Technical Advisory Committee (PTAC).

On December 19, 2017, the PTAC approved the Advanced Primary Care Alternative Payment Model for limited testing. The next step in the process calls for the Secretary of Health and Human Services to review and act on the recommendation from the PTAC. We urge a timely review of this important and thoughtful proposal.

For your background, the APC-APM is a comprehensive primary care delivery system and payment reform proposal, developed by the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) and supported by numerous primary care and health care organizations. The proposal promotes advanced primary care as foundational to our health care system while also taking significant steps to reduce the complexity for physicians allowing them to focus on providing care to their patients.

We believe that the APC-APM proposal is consistent with the Administration's goals of preserving independent medical practices, lowering the cost of health care, and reducing the administrative burden for physicians and other health care providers. If fully implemented, the APC-APM would allow more than 200,000 primary care physicians to engage in a payment model that promotes the value of primary care through comprehensive and continuous patient-centered primary care.

Preserving and promoting comprehensive, continuous, and patient-centered primary are is a goal we all share. We believe the APC-APM could be an important step towards achieving this mutual goal. Therefore, we are pleased to lend our support to the proposal and its further testing, as recommended by the PTAC.

Mr. Secretary, thank you for the opportunity to share these views with you. Please contact Jason Cooke in Representative David Rouzer's office or Maria Costigan in Representative Joe Courtney's office for additional information on the Primary Care Caucus or this recommendation.

Sincerely,