ASE Joins Letter Responding to Appropriate Use Criteria Provisions in Patients First Act and the ROOT Act

On September 14, ASE joined the American College of Cardiology, the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology, the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions, and the Society for Cardiovascular Computed Tomography in a letter to the US House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee opposing the Radiology Outpatient Ordering Transmission (ROOT) Act (H.R. 5737). While the coalition supports the MIPS reforms in the Patients First Act, it opposes the ROOT Act’s standalone Appropriate Use Criteria consultation mandate, arguing it revives the same siloed, CDSM-dependent structure that CMS itself abandoned after the PAMA AUC program failed to demonstrate value, and that it adds a repetitive, burdensome click-through requirement that does not account for specialist expertise or reflect meaningful differences among competing AUC tools.

This letter reinforces ASE’s consistent, long-standing opposition to standalone AUC mandates, a position ASE has taken across multiple recent letters including its May 8 coalition letter and its comments on the Patients First Act’s Section 207. By uniting the cardiovascular imaging societies against the ROOT Act specifically, this letter strengthens the case that appropriate use of cardiac imaging should be addressed through integrated quality frameworks rather than a parallel administrative mandate, protecting echocardiographers and other cardiovascular imaging clinicians from added click-through burden that does not improve clinical decision-making.