Need for the Components of Care Survey

The Senate Finance Committee has proposed policy options that would severely cut Medicare payments for cancer care services. As CMS looks to recalculate payments for all medical services from Medicare, it too will be relying on a published report of a different kind; the AMA Practice Expense Survey Data obtained from a random sampling of physicians, both academic and community based. And, although the AMA survey may be appropriate to capture practice expense for primary care, it was not designed for the variety and complexity of services delivered by community oncology practices. Without our own data on the clinical and operational components of delivering cancer care, community oncology simply has no way of defending itself against cuts proposed by Congress and/or the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

Many of you will recall the damages incurred in 2002/2003, when CMS was provided with simplistic and outdated data on community oncology practice expense. CMS has continued to rely on that outdated and grossly inaccurate data as the rationale for not creating additional payment codes for the essential services in oncology, as was the congressional intent in the the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA). A statement from another professional organization representing physicians who treat people with cancer helps to drive home the importance of completing COA’s Components of Care Survey and it reads: “If oncologists submit too little data to be considered valid, we may jeopardize our field relative to others who did provide sufficient data. The risk of not participating is that oncology payments will be static or reduced, while others move ahead at our expense.” 
 


The question you need to answer is, “Do you want outdated and non-specific data to be used to further cut Medicare payments for the services you provide?” If the answer is “No,” you need to return the Components of Care Survey ASAP. If you do not have a copy of the survey, go to the Community Oncology Alliance (COA) website above to access the survey and instructions. There is also contact information if you have any questions on how to fill out the survey.



The Components of Care Survey was designed by a team of representatives from community oncology practices and beta tested before it was fielded. It takes some time to fill out because it captures the complexity of what you do to deliver cancer care. If it were easy to fill out, like past surveys, it would not capture the clinical and operational complexity of cancer care.



In addition to helping your practice by contributing your data to community oncology, you will be provided with new information that will help you in your negotiations with private payers. Only practices returning the Components of Care Survey will receive specific data to help in negotiations with private payers and access to a network of administrators sharing information on how to optimally use the data in negotiations.