Yesterday, ACC President Kim Allan Williams, Sr., MD, FACC, represented the College at the White House where President Barack Obama hosted a reception to celebrate passage of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA). Williams attended the Rose Garden ceremony along with Democrat and Republican Committee staff, House Speaker John Boehner, Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, and Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Matthew Burwell.

The recently passed legislation, which permanently repeals the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR), establishes a framework for rewarding clinicians for value over volume, streamlines quality reporting programs into one system, and reauthorizes two years of funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program, is a tremendous victory for the house of medicine and ends nearly two decades of uncertainty for providers, practices and patients.

The SGR and the perpetual instability it created is officially a concern of the past, meaning clinicians can now focus on providing high quality, patient-centered care unburdened by the looming threat of payment cuts. ACC's member leaders have played an enormous role in this achievement, participating in years' worth of meetings with lawmakers and responding to countless alerts to educate Congress on the topic.

The ACC applauds Congress and the president for coming together and working to strengthen care for our nation’s most vulnerable populations. With this threat off the table, we can now turn our attention to the important work of bringing our health care delivery system into a new era.

Read more about this historic milestone on ACC.org.

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