Steering Committee ‘Making Progress’ on Complex Rehab Benefit

BUFFALO, N.Y. — If you think getting a bill through
Congress is easy, just check the steps involved in securing
legislation that would create a separate
Medicare benefit for complex rehab.

According to Don Clayback, the steering committee working on the
benefit is “making progress in accordance with our 2011 plan.”
Draft legislation has been written, clinical groups including the
American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) and the American
Physical Therapy Association (APTA) have signed on to support the
initiative, and an independent economic research firm is working on
the estimated cost for the legislation.

But there’s still a lot of work to do. In an update sent this
morning, Clayback, steering committee chair and executive director
of NCART, outlined the hurdles left to jump in the process:

“1) Obtain bipartisan commitment to introduce the needed
legislation from two members of Congress (one Democrat and one
Republican). This is our immediate focus and will involve
discussions on the details of our issues, the draft language, the
related costs, and the potential offsets to allow the bill to be
budget-neutral.

2) Next, the draft legislation (with any desired modifications)
will be sent to the Office of the Legislative Counsel in Congress
so that it can be reviewed, edited, and prepared for formal
introduction.

3) Once the legislative language is finalized, it will be
formally introduced and assigned a bill number. This is a critical
achievement, because once we have a bill introduced we can then
most effectively engage all stakeholders in grassroots efforts
focused on that specific bill number to garner additional
cosponsors.

4) Upon introduction the bill will be referred to a committee of
jurisdiction. There it will be subject to additional review.

5) At some point (before introduction or after introduction) the
bill will be forwarded to the Congressional Budget Office for their
official scoring of the projected financial cost over a 10-year
period.

6) Finally, with enough congressional support, our legislation
will be attached to a larger bill and be brought to the floor of
the House and/or Senate for a vote. It needs to be passed in both
chambers and then sent on to the president for signing. Once passed
and signed we have accomplished our legislative objective and can
move on to the implementation.”

Once legislation is passed, Clayback explained in the udpate,
“we will be working with CMS on the implementation of the
legislation and the development of related policies and other
changes.”

Said Clayback, “At the start of this year we stated our efforts
in 2011 need to be viewed as a marathon, not a sprint. So stay
hydrated and pace yourselves.”

See the NCART
or NRRTS
websites for more information on the separate benefit
initiative.