This week, I’m looking back at the year 2019, in two parts. In this blog, I’ll look at policy; in my second blog in this series, I’ll look at “everything else”—fully recognizing, of course, that policy and “everything else” are completely interconnected; but I needed to divide up this year in review conceptually, so that’s…
The National Association of Accountable Care Organizations (NAACOS) today launched a new taskforce to help doctors and hospitals understand and prepare for new value-based payment models. The nonprofit organization, which represents hundreds of organizations participating in new payment and delivery models, announced the formation of its direct contracting task force that will offer tools to providers to…
Although legislative pressure to transition to value-based care began several years ago, movement to alternative payment models (APMs) and changes to healthcare reimbursement have been slow, according to CHIME HealthCare’s Most Wired report. The report, recently made public, was based on responses to CHIME’s 2019 Most Wired survey. CHIME (the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives) conducts…
The majority of physicians now participate in an accountable care organization (ACO), the American Medical Association (AMA) recently reported. Overall, 53.8 percent of physicians polled in September 2018 for the AMA’s Physician Practice Benchmark Survey reported participating in at least one ACO type that year. The percentage is up from 44.0 percent in 2016, the recently…
About 90,000 clinicians who participated in advanced alternative payment models in 2017 are concerned that they haven’t received bonuses from the CMS. Advanced alternative payment models, also known as advanced APMs, were created under MACRA in 2015 and offer an opportunity for clinicians to receive a 5% bonus to their Medicare payments if they participate….
When asked why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton, the infamous US bank robber, responded “because that’s where the money is.” This quote is the inspiration for “Sutton’s Law,” which recommends prioritizing those diagnostic tests that are most likely to yield a definitive diagnosis and quickly lead to a treatment recommendation. While Sutton’s Law has been…
Health care spending is projected to grow to 19.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2027, and big gaps in quality and access to care persist. This has motivated payers and providers to implement alternative payment models (APMs) to enable higher-value care. There is bipartisan agreement, reflected in the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA)…
Executive Summary Alternative payment models (APMs) are central to the efforts to reduce the growth in healthcare costs and improve outcomes for patients. Yet some stakeholders remain skeptical of their potential. This is understandable, because APMs have shown mixed results. We have identified seven characteristics of well-designed models that yield meaningful savings for payers, improve…
The reason CMS Alternative Payment Models (APMs) are failing to significantly reduce spending in Medicare is that none of the major APMs meets the majority of the eight criteria for a successful APM. The Problems with Medicare’s Alternative Payment Models and How to Fix Them details the serious weaknesses in the six major Advanced APMs that have…
What might be in the works over at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI)? Are there new pilot models actively in development that will be rolled out this year? Many industry stakeholders, including federal lawmakers, are eager to know what the relatively opaque agency has in store. Created under the Obama administration, CMMI…