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How can federal healthcare officials effectively stimulate forward the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) for accountable care organizations (ACOs)? A team of healthcare policy researchers believes that senior officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will need to rethink the financial incentives for ACO leaders—and will need to face up to a number of hurdles.
In an article published in the June 6 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine entitled “Getting More Savings from ACOs—Can the Pace Be Pushed?” J. Michael McWilliams, M.D., Ph.D., Bruce E. Landon, M.D., Vinay K. Rathi, M.D., and Michael E. Chernew, Ph.D., write that “Strengthening incentives for ACOs to reduce spending is challenging because the program is voluntary. Some approaches — such as requiring ACOs to bear downside risk for excess spending — may make the program unattractive to some providers, potentially lowering programwide savings by reducing participation.