CMS Issues RFI to Reduce Paperwork

On June 6, the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a Request for Information (RFI) regarding its Patients over Paperwork Initiative. CMS is seeking public input on ways to reduce administrative and regulatory burdens on healthcare providers, with an overall goal of reducing healthcare costs and increasing the time providers spend with their patients. The initiative is expected to save 40 million hours and $5.7 billion by 2021.

Since launching the Patients over Paperwork Initiative in 2017, CMS has been working to simplify documentation and coding, improve quality and operational efficiency, and create meaningful measures. For example, CMS’s new Patient Driven Payment Model, due to start in October 2019, will connect Medicare payments to skilled nursing facilities to patients’ conditions and care needs, rather than the quantity of services provided. The Model will also simplify the paperwork required for patient assessments, which is predicted to save $2 billion over the next 10 years.

According to the new RFI, CMS is particularly interested in ideas on how to reduce the burdens of reporting and documentation requirements, beneficiary enrollment and eligibility determinations, prior authorization procedures, and policies and requirements for beneficiaries dually enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid, among other topics. Public comments are due by August 12, 2019.