Sponsors (5)
The bill makes Medicare ACO quality reporting more flexible and starts a digital reporting pilot (with assistance and public reporting) to modernize and stabilize reporting, but it shifts implementation costs to providers, may weaken incentives for complete data, and grants administrative discretion that could reduce transparency and slow full adoption.
Hospitals, health systems, and ACOs get multi-year (2025–2029) regulatory flexibility and multiple accepted reporting options, making it easier to meet Medicare quality-reporting requirements and plan IT/workflows.
Selected ACOs (and ultimately Medicare providers and beneficiaries) will pilot digital quality-measure reporting with practicable technical assistance and public reporting of results by Dec 31, 2032, promoting modernization, potential long-term administrative burden reduction, and transparency about feasibility.
Accountable Care Organizations and participating providers are protected from being penalized solely because data from one or more participants are excluded, reducing risk of unfair performance determinations.
Hospitals, health systems, and smaller practices may face upfront implementation costs and workflow disruption to support additional reporting formats and to join digital reporting pilots.
Giving the Secretary authority to implement certain clarifications via program instruction (rather than formal rulemaking) and limiting how pilot data are used could reduce transparency, stakeholder notice-and-comment opportunities, and slow evaluation or integration of digital measures into payment/accountability systems.
Clarifying that excluding one or more participants' data cannot alone make submissions 'unrepresentative' could weaken incentives to include complete participant-level data and reduce measure completeness and accuracy, potentially harming patients reliant on those quality measures.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Requires CMS to offer three ACO quality-data collection types for 2025–2029, prevents deeming submissions unrepresentative if some participant data are excluded, and creates a 2028–2032 digital measure pilot.
Makes targeted changes to Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) ACO quality reporting: requires CMS to make three specific quality-data collection types available for ACO-reported measures for performance years 2025–2029, clarifies that ACO-submitted data should not be labeled “unrepresentative” just because data from one or more ACO participants are excluded (effective for performance years beginning Jan 1, 2025), and establishes a digital quality measure pilot for performance years 2028–2032 with selected ACOs, reporting waivers, technical assistance, and public reporting of results.
Introduced September 15, 2025 by Vernon G. Buchanan · Last progress September 15, 2025