On February 10^th, ASAM provided comments to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) applauding the Biden-Harris Administration’s critical focus on addressing addiction treatment needs, including through the CMS Behavioral Health Strategy. ASAM encouraged CMS to address the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule's (MPFS) physician payment methodology challenges in the next release of the MPFS in 2024. Key highlights from the letter include that ASAM urged CMS to improve practice expense data collection, examine the validity of the current CMS proxy crosswalk for certain specialties/subspecialties in the absence of PE data, address the significant structural inequities between physician payment for primary and addiction-related specialty care, promote alternative payment models, ensure Medicare billing codes reflect the full continuum of addiction care, and conduct comprehensive outreach and education campaigns to ensure physicians and patients are aware of existing Medicare codes to report addiction treatment services.

Read the letter here.