House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee ranking minority member Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) has asked the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to submit a written plan for revising its self-referral disclosure protocol, used by various health care providers to self-disclose actual or potential violations of the physician self-referral law.

As the lead author of the provision in the Affordable Care Act establishing the protocol, McDermott in an Aug. 13 letter to agency administrator Marilyn Tavenner said the agency was taking several months to settle disclosures that have been submitted under the law, often called the Stark law.

The letter calls on the agency to more promptly resolve disclosures made through the protocol. It asks the agency to submit a detailed plan by Oct. 15 to address the backlog and to ensure that the protocol will function better in the future.