Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MEDPAC) Report

Report to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission on CER and CED

The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission contracted with CMTP to critically review the comparative effectiveness research (CER) landscape in the United States and its relevance to the Medicare program.  This project was part of the Commission’s continuing effort to explore ways to give Medicare flexibility to be a more innovative, value-based purchaser.  Specifically, the project examined:

  • the current status and potential direction for Medicare’s coverage with evidence development (CED) policies;
  • mechanisms in place to enable Medicare’s engagement in setting a CER research agenda;
  • and opportunities to use CER to strengthen Medicare’s payment and coding policies.

Much of the work was drawn from the personal experiences of senior CMTP leaders from their work at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).  These perspectives were supplemented by information obtained from key informant interviews and a literature review.  Case histories were used to illustrate opportunities and barriers to realizing the potential of CER for informing Medicare policies.

The Commission was particularly interested in the potential for strengthening Medicare’s authority to implement CED policies and CMTP presented the findings of the review of CED to the Commission on March 4, 2010.

Documents
pdf CMTP Report to MEDPAC (pdf) (683.28 kB)
pdf MEDPAC Report (pdf) (1.89 MB)