On April 16, President Obama signed into law House Resolution 2, known as the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015. This legislation permanently repealed the flawed Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula, the reason for the endless cycle of “doc fixes” that have temporarily staved off 17 drastic Medicare reimbursement cuts since 2003. However, the new law also contains Section 514 – Oversight of Medicare Coverage of Manual Manipulation of the Spine to Correct Subluxation, which singles out the chiropractic profession, as follows:

Medical review of spinal subluxation services, focusing on:

• Chiropractors whose pattern of billing is aberrant compared to peers, and
• Chiropractors who, in the prior period, has a services denial percentage in the 85th percentile or greater
• Prior authorization medical review for services furnished by a chiropractor that are part of an episode oftreatment that includes more than 12 services
• Improving documentation of services. Under the law, the Secretary of HHS, in conjunction with stakeholders,including the American Chiropractic Association, shall develop educational and training programs to improve the ability of chiropractors to provide documentation in a manner that demonstrates that such services are reasonable and necessary for the diagnosis or treatment of illness or injury or to improve the functioning of a malformed body member.The Chiropractic Summit Steering Committee is pleased to announce that the final bill includes participation by multiple stakeholders within the profession. As a result, full cooperative efforts of the Summit members will be necessary to help foster improvement in documentation of services by every doctor of chiropractic. As in the past, the summit steering committee members look forward to working closely together to help implement and disseminate any federal educational programs and initiatives throughout the profession.