WASHINGTON – Senate legislation introduced last month calls for the overhaul of the $400 million-a-year program charged with providing technical assistance to boost the quality of Medicare services.

Sens. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.) sponsored the bill that calls for the remake of the Quality Improvement Organization Congress created 25 years ago to improve services delivered to Medicare beneficiaries.  

“It’s an oxymoron to have a quality improvement program that turns out to be poor quality,” Grassley said. “It needs a major overhaul. This program has evolved to have many different functions. Some of them are at cross-purposes, and the QIOs aren’t performing any of the functions well.”

“We agree that it is time to modernize the nation’s QIO program but it appears that we disagree on how that should look,” said Marc Bennett, president of  The American Health Quality Association, which represents the QIOs. “We are still reviewing the Grassley/Baucus proposal to understand their strategy more fully.”

Just a year ago, Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt outlined plans to boost the program. Leavitt’s report to Congress responded then to criticisms and recommendations that had been leveled in a series of studies from the Institute of Medicine.

Leavitt noted the crucial role QIOs played in supporting one of the largest national efforts to provide help to physician offices in adoption of health information technology.

The Grassley-Baucus bill calls for a greater focus of QIO efforts on technical assistance for quality improvement and performance measurement. It would require transitioning other QIO responsibilities, including complaint investigations, to other entities.