U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, a member of the Senate Committee on Finance, is urging the federal Health and Human Services Administration (HHS) to use Washington State’s high-performing health care delivery system as a model to reform the Medicare program to focus on the value, not the volume, of health care services.
Saying that Washington State is a national leader in delivering lower-cost, higher-quality health care, Cantwell applauded HHS for making major grants to Washington State to improve health care delivery systems.
She reiterated her support for bipartisan legislation she recently introduced to make Medicare’s Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) more beneficial to providers and patients in rural communities. WSHA strongly supports that legislation — the Rural ACO Improvement Act of 2015 — which allows Medicare to include primary care visits by nurse practitioners, physicians’ assistants and clinical nurse specialists in assigning patients to an Accountable Care Organization. Read more here. (Cassie Sauer)
