Medical staff members are often the last to be informed of new risk-based contracts. However, they are usually the first to feel the financial impact of taking on greater risk. With our nation’s medical staff leaders and professionals in mind, I recently coauthored an article for the March 2020 issue of Medical Staff Briefing (MSB) in collaboration…
Accountable care organizations are racing to implement telehealth and remote patient monitoring to coordinate care and stay afloat financially during the COVID-19 outbreak, a new survey found. The survey of 20 ACOs led by researchers with Hamilton College and Within Health, a startup that helps ACOs with radiology workflow, explored strategies that ACOs are using…
The CMS on Monday encouraged providers to share clinical data in the Quality Payment Program that could help combat the COVID-19 pandemic. The agency will give providers credit in the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System if they participate in a clinical trial that uses a drug or biologic to treat COVID-19 and report the data to…
The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission is recommending that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services scrap pandemic-skewed 2020 performance benchmarks for at-risk accountable care organizations. “The COVID-19 public health emergency has likely affected—and will continue to affect, at least through 2020—Medicare spending in ways that are yet to be fully understood,” MedPAC Chairman Francis J….
As the coronavirus sickens tens of thousands of Americans while pressuring the bottom lines of medical providers, analysts worry the pandemic could also hit pause on the decades-long march toward value-based care, as hospitals and doctors look to recoup revenue in the short-term instead of putting more dollars at risk. Massive health systems and independent physician offices alike…
This post is the second part of a two-part Health Affairs Blog series summarizing the coronavirus pandemic’s impact and policy implications for payment reforms, notably the largest payment reform program in the country: accountable care organizations (ACOs). In Part 1, published yesterday, we assessed changes in use and financial impact on ACOs based on existing data, highlighting the…
“Pathways to Success” is continuing to push ACOs towards taking on greater risk. The key to success for Medicare ACOs during this time is maintaining what is referred to as “The Risk Transition Triangle”. During this webinar, we will discuss the three “legs” of the Risk Transition Download Slides Visit the Salient Healthcare exhibit…
The purpose of this two-part Health Affairs Blog post is to summarize impacts, issues, and policy implications due to the coronavirus pandemic for the largest payment reform program in the country: accountable care organizations (ACOs). Clinician organizations participating in, and payers running, payment reform programs face significant uncertainty. ACOs, in particular, face substantial risk of financial loss…
The Washington, D.C.-based National Association of Accountable Care Organizations (NAACOS) on April 13 released the results of a survey of member ACOs that holds dire implications for the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) for ACOs; at the same time, the association called on the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to hold harmless all providers participating in…
CMS announced April 9 that it has delivered more than $51 billion in payments to hospitals and other healthcare providers in the past week through the Accelerated and Advance Payment Program. CMS expanded the payment program to a broader group of healthcare providers in late March to help offset the financial impact of COVID-19. On April 7, the…