Legislators Urge CMS to Delay PAMA Implementation
April 29, 2016Several legislators have penned a letter to CMS asking the government payor to delay the implementation of a law that will establish a market-based payment system for clinical lab tests. The Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014 (PAMA) seeks to implement this payment system using private payor rates by Jan. 1, 2017. But CMS hasn’t yet issued a final rule, so legislators are concerned that the agency will “improperly rush” implementation in the coming months. “Updating the clinical lab fee schedule is a highly complex task with significant implications for all stakeholders, with a reach far beyond the Medicare program,” House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee Chairman Pat Tiberi (R-OH) wrote in a letter to CMS Acting Administrator Andy Slavitt, co-signed by more than two dozen other Republican and Democratic committee members. “We believe the critical alterations to the CLFS must be accomplished in a deliberate and measured manner, so that laboratories have sufficient time, once the final rule and subregulatory guidance are issued, to comply,” the letter said. “Given the delays in the rulemaking process, the January 1, 2017 effective date for the new CLFS payment methodology is not feasible and should be delayed.”