Advocates applaud PACE recommendations to strengthen audit coordination, transparency

This article was originally published on McKnights Home Care.

The National PACE Association hailed three new recommendations put forth by the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC) to strengthen federal-state audit coordination, improve transparency and develop a standardized national quality measure for the Program of All-inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE).

“It’s a reflection of a growing recognition that as PACE expands, the oversight framework needs to evolve with it, especially to reduce duplication and better demonstrate program value,” Tonya Saffer, chief policy and advocacy officer at NPA, told McKnight’s Home Care Daily Pulse on Monday. “So I think it’s really a timely set of recommendations as the PACE community has been growing.”

A total of 202 nonprofit and for-profit PACE organizations are operating in 33 states today, Saffer said. The recommendations, which will be published in the June report to Congress, are an outgrowth of two years of knowledge-gathering on the PACE program and conversations with NPA and others, Saffer said.

In its research, MACPAC found some consistent challenges and variation in state approaches to PACE, she said. One of the problems uncovered was the lack of coordination between federal and state audits of PACE organizations. To this,  MACPAC recommended the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services update audit protocols and three-way program agreements to facilitate joint audits of PACE organizations with state administering agencies.

“I think this piece is really meaningful because the recommendations could translate fairly quickly into less administrative burden and more streamlined oversight for the PACE organizations,” Saffer said.

MACPAC also sought to respond to the issue of limited availability of accessible information on PACE program quality and performance. On this, it offered two recommendations to CMS: Aggregate and publicly release, in a user-friendly format on the CMS website, existing PACE program performance data; and develop a standardized, national quality measure set for PACE organizations.

These two recommendations, which likely will take longer to implement, are “more foundational,” Saffer said.

Ultimately, the three recommendations will help drive quality improvement and help shed light on the value that PACE provides, Saffer said.

“I think this is really going to help position PACE for responsible growth and stronger visibility both with policy makers and the public,” Saffer said.

NPA hopes to play a role in is helping shape the recommendations for CMS, Saffer noted.