CMS Announces New RFI on Patients over Paperwork

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a Request for Information (RFI) seeking new ideas from the public on how to continue the progress of the Patients over Paperwork initiative. As of January 2019, CMS estimates that through regulatory reform alone, the health care system will save an estimated 40 million hours and $5.7 billion through 2021. These estimated savings come from both final and proposed rules.

The RFI on Reducing Administrative Burden to Put Patients over Paperwork invites patients and their families, the medical community, and other health care stakeholders to recommend further changes to rules, policies, and procedures that would shift more of clinicians’ time and our health care system’s resources from needless paperwork to high-quality care that improves patient health.

The RFI provides an opportunity for you to share new ideas not conveyed during the first Patients over Paperwork RFI in 2017 and continue the conversation on improving health care delivery. CMS is seeking innovative ideas that broaden perspectives on potential solutions to relieve burden and ways to improve:

• Reporting and documentation requirements
• Coding and documentation requirements for Medicare or Medicaid payment
• Prior authorization procedures
• Policies and requirements for rural providers, clinicians, and beneficiaries
• Policies and requirements for dually enrolled (i.e., Medicare and Medicaid) beneficiaries
• Beneficiary enrollment and eligibility determination
• CMS processes for issuing regulations and policies

The RFI on Reducing Administrative Burden to Put Patients over Paperwork is posted in the Federal Register here.