COVER STORY


Advocacy Works


Over years, ASCA and its members have reduced burdens on ASCs BY KARA NEWBURY


T


he ASC community celebrated its 50th anniversary last year and has


much to be proud of over the course of its history. The past decade alone has been full of advocacy achievements. While ASCA focuses much of its efforts on payment policy, it is impor- tant to highlight some of the advocacy wins in the areas of quality reporting and survey and certification made pos- sible with information and support from ASCA members.


Quality Reporting In 2006, the ASC community began encouraging the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to estab- lish a uniform quality reporting sys- tem that would allow ASCs to pub- licly demonstrate their performance on quality measures. CMS listened and implemented the Ambulatory Surgical Center Quality Reporting (ASCQR)


6 ASC FOCUS AUGUST 2021 | ascfocus.org


Program on October 1, 2012. The ASC Quality Collaboration (ASC QC) developed many of the measures that were part of the inaugural ASCQR Program, and the ASC community ral- lied around the program, with 98.9 per- cent of ASCs meeting quality report- ing requirements in the first year of the program’s implementation.


Cataract Measures


Although supportive of the ASCQR Program, ASCA has pushed back when onerous provisions have been proposed. For example, ASCA opposed the addi- tion of two cataract measures that CMS proposed adding in 2014: Cata- racts: Complications within 30 Days Following Cataract Surgery Requiring Additional Surgical Procedures and ASC-11, Cataracts: Improvement in Patient’s Visual Function within 90 Days Following Cataract Surgery.


While the complications within


30 days following surgery measure was not finalized, CMS did finalize ASC-11 and implementation was set to begin in 2014. ASCA staff worked closely with a coalition of representa- tives from ophthalmic specialty societ- ies to influence CMS and raise aware- ness in Congress. At first, mandatory reporting was delayed until January 1, 2015, and eventually the measure was made voluntary, so reporting has never been required for ASC-11.


OAS CAHPS Since the initial development of the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Outpatient and Ambulatory Surgery Survey (OAS CAHPS) and the five quality mea- sures based on it, ASCA has raised concerns with the administrative bur- dens associated with the survey. In the 2017 final rule, CMS finalized these measures beginning with 2018 data collection, mandating that facil- ities have 300 completed surveys


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