AMGA’s Priorities for Modernizing Nation’s Healthcare Delivery System

By Taylor Martin, MS

On March 9, 2026, AMGA sent a comprehensive letter to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. outlining a bold set of regulatory and legislative priorities aimed at modernizing the nation’s healthcare delivery system by reducing administrative complexity and waste, promoting innovation, and ensuring long-term payment stability for the physicians and providers caring for millions of Americans. 

“Our goal is simple: Ensure HHS regulations reflect how care is delivered today and not the healthcare landscape of the 1960s,” said Jerry Penso, MD, MBA, president and CEO of AMGA. “Physicians and their care teams are spending too much time navigating outdated, burdensome rules instead of focusing on their patients. This has a real cost.” 

We provided detailed recommendations on several key priorities designed to eliminate administrative waste, promote innovation in care delivery, and ensure long-term payment stability. 

Reducing Administrative Waste and Complexity

We called for significant reform of prior authorization (PA) requirements, which delay access to medically necessary care and impose substantial administrative costs. The letter supports “gold carding” for high-performing providers and urges accelerated decision timeframes and greater transparency from payers. We also urged the Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy to revise “immediate resulting” rules for patient health information, citing instances in which patients received serious diagnoses, including cancer and miscarriage, through automated portal notifications before their physicians could provide counseling or context.

Promoting Innovation in Care Delivery

We urged HHS to eliminate, where possible, the outdated Medicare three-day inpatient stay requirement for skilled nursing facility coverage, arguing it restricts timely access to appropriate post-acute care. The letter also called for permanent extension of pandemic-era telehealth flexibilities, including payment parity, audio-only visit coverage, and the ability to prescribe controlled substances via telehealth.

For alternative payment models (APMs), we recommended that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) preserve voluntary participation, streamline quality measurement, and harmonize reporting requirements to protect team-based care coordination and investment in value-based infrastructure.

Ensuring Long-Term Payment Stability

We called the current Medicare Physician Fee Schedule framework “broken and unsustainable,” urging Congress and HHS to pursue comprehensive reform that provides predictable, inflation-adjusted payment updates reflecting actual practice costs.

Implementing Recommendations from the MACRA Task Force Report

We also shared recommendations from our MACRA and Value-Based Care Task Force, which convened over the course of two years with practicing physician executives from across the country. The Task Force produced consensus-based policy recommendations organized around six pillars: enhancing patient engagement, improving health outcomes, protecting patient dignity at end of life, removing regulatory barriers, supporting rural and underserved providers, and ensuring the long-term sustainability of high-value care.

We reiterated our readiness to meet with Secretary Kennedy and HHS leadership to discuss our recommendations in greater detail.