A federal review of 20 top-performing Medicare Shared Savings Program accountable care organizations (ACO) identified seven broad strategies for success. The Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, relying on interviews and self-reporting from ACO officials, asked them to identify successful strategies they used to lower Medicare spending and improve care quality. The report comes…
What a difference a year makes. In Spring 2018, many Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) pondered a walkout over Medicare plans that included downside risk in ACO financials. Nonetheless, CMS finalized its plans to make provider risk a reality for all ACOs in its Pathways to Success overhaul of the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP). ACOs’ lukewarm reception…
ACOs have big decisions to make regarding CMS’s Pathways to Success value-based initiative. With new rules dictating how long they can stay in the Shared Savings track before moving towards a risk arrangement, eligible ACOs must now determine: · Which Pathways track is right for their organization · When to enter that track · How to adjust…
Accountable care organizations participating in the Medicare Shared Savings Program have only modestly lowered the program’s spending overall. They saved the program about $314 million in 2017, which is a fraction of Medicare’s total spending of nearly $706 billion that year. But certain ACOs have done better than their peers. These high-performers that have both…
Health care is a deeply partisan issue, as the presidential campaign makes clear every day. Yet beneath the bitter debates and far from the daily headlines, Republicans and Democrats have quietly come to agree on one reform with far-reaching consequences: transforming our century-old system for paying doctors for the care they provide from one based…
Dive Brief: Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts’ Alternative Quality Contract (AQC) population health program with two-sided risk cut per-enrollee spending by as much as 11.9% compared to a control group, according to a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers from Harvard and Tufts University medical schools, Massachusetts General Hospital and Haven…
Once again on last Thursday, July 19, we were witnesses to the ongoing debate over how well ACOs (accountable care organizations) participating in the MSSP (Medicare Shared Savings Program) program are doing. And it was and is a debate of interest and of importance. How full is that glass? It absolutely depends on one’s perspective—and…
The Medicare Shared Savings Program added about 40 new ACOs, effective July 1, according to the National Association of ACOs. The new entrants mark a decline from the program’s first seven years, when the program averaged more than 100 new ACOs each year. In total, the MSSP program lost 43 ACOs this year, with a total…
Starting physician compensation for medical specialists was mostly up from 2018 to 2019, while the salaries of primary care physicians plateaued, according to a recent Merritt Hawkins report. The physician search and recruiting firm’s 2019 Review of Physician and Advanced Practitioner Recruiting Incentives showed that most specialties saw year-over-year increases in starting physician compensation, with increases ranging from…
Download Slides What will be covered in this presentation: Current state of value-based payment models Similarities and differences across Medicare Advantage and Medicare patient populations, attribution methods, payment mechanisms, quality metrics, post-acute care pathways, and other concepts for contract negotiation Required resources and infrastructure for maintenance and management. Visit Salient Healthcare Booth