The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) are forming a new committee meant to advise the agencies on policies to “improve how care is financed and delivered” under federal health insurers.
Dubbed the Healthcare Advisory Committee, the group is intended to help HHS and CMS meet goals set under the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda. This includes chronic disease prevention, reducing “unnecessary red tape” within federal insurance programs, making Medicare Advantage more sustainable, and identifying “structural opportunities to improve quality for the most vulnerable in the Medicaid program,” according to an Aug. 21 agency press release.
Ge Bai, a professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told Healthcare Brew that deregulation will likely be a priority.
“To me, it’s probably a signal of some kind of a significant change in direction as compared to previous administrations,” Bai said.
An obvious area for deregulation would be CMS’s physician quality reporting program, according to Bai. A 2023 study conducted at Johns Hopkins Hospital, which Bai coauthored, found quality reporting took the hospital 108,478 hours in 2018, amounting to more than $5 million in personnel costs.
The American Medical Association, a national professional group representing physicians, has previously urged the Trump administration to reduce reporting requirements.
In a notice to the Federal Register, HHS and CMS said the advisory committee will focus on finding ways to “allow providers to focus on improving patient health outcomes, not filling out paperwork.”
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A closer look. The committee is set to consist of 15 volunteer members, appointed by CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz. The members will report directly to Oz and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for two years. CMS is looking for experts in “chronic disease prevention and management, federally administered healthcare financing, and delivery system reform,” according to the release. Nominations are due by Sept. 22, and the officials plan to select members later this year.
When it comes to improving Medicaid, the committee will be tasked with looking for ways to improve the quality of the program “outside of more funding for the current system,” the notice stated. And with Medicare Advantage, the committee is specifically supposed to look for ways to “modernize risk adjustment and quality measures that assess and improve health outcomes.”
Spokespeople for HHS and CMS declined to provide further comment clarifying the committee’s goals or how it will function.
The bigger picture. The group’s formation comes after the Trump administration’s dismantling of several federal healthcare advisory committees.
In May, the administration shut down the CDC’s Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee, which created national standards meant to slow the spread of infectious diseases.
In June, Kennedy fired all members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a CDC committee that recommended how to use vaccines to manage public health.
CMS’s Health Equity Advisory Committee and the HHS’s Office of Long Covid Research and Practice were also shut down this year.