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In a recent letter to the Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services, the National Association of ACOs (NAACOS) made several recommendations for how CMS could bring more innovation to the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP). Aisha Pittman, M.P.H., NAACOS’ senior vice president of government affairs, spoke with Healthcare Innovation in detail about the policy recommendations to accelerate the adoption of value-based care.
Healthcare Innovation: One thing your letter to CMS says is that MSSP innovation has been stalled since the 2019 Pathways to Success rule, which created an on-ramp to risk. Why do you think it stalled? Did the pandemic have something to do with that or did CMS have its focus on other alternative payment models?
Pittman: From an alternative payment model perspective, MSSP is the only permanent one and sits outside of the CMS Innovation Center. That Pathways to Success rule was the last time that we saw major changes to the program. There are, of course, minor changes year over year. But in that time, the Innovation Center has tested a variety of approaches in ACO models, including Next Gen and then REACH. There are flexibilities and approaches in those models that have proven to be successful, even though those models overall did not meet the criteria for permanence and expansion. There are aspects of the models that were really successful, and those are some of the things that we think we should bring into the permanent model to spur innovation.