On June 6, the North Carolina Medical Society submitted comments on the Proposed Rule for Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) to Donald Berwick, MD, Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

John R. Mangum, MD, President of the NCMS, stated in the letter, “While the NCMS strongly supports the goals of the Shared Savings Program to improve health and quality and to control costs, we are convinced that the proposed ACO rules are seriously flawed and that, as currently structured in the proposed rule, the Shared Savings Program is likely to fail.”

Click here to read the NCMS letter.

The comment letter was a culmination of an intensive eight-week review of the lengthy proposed regulations by the NCMS Accountable Care Task Force. The task force, chaired by Steve Wegner, MD, JD, was instrumental in framing the feedback provided to CMS.

A special thanks to the following task force members and consultants for reviewing in detail and identifying issues in certain sections of the proposed rule and related documents:

NCMS Board member Paul Cunningham, MD, and Janice Van Riper from Brody School of Medicine, Greenville; John Godehn, MD, Hendersonville; Nancy Henley, MD, Department of Internal Medicine, UNC-Chapel Hill; Genie Komives, MD, BCBSNC, Chapel Hill; Grace Terrell, MD, Cornerstone Health Care, High Point; Fran Sembert, Eagle Physicians, Greensboro; and Steve Shaber, Esq., and Kim Licata, Esq., with the Poyner Spruill law firm in Raleigh.

For a summary of comments filed by other major health care interest groups, click here.